Linux #! incompatibility?

[Matthias Andree]

On Wed, 04 Dec 2002, David Relson wrote:

> I thought the "#!" interpretation done in the shell.  Now I know that it's 
> the kernel that interprets the pound-bang of an executable.  Interesting :-)

Yes, the kernel looks at the file and check if it has a binfmt_* driver
for that, it has drivers for a.out and variants, ELF, shell scripts,
maybe Java, ... and it looks as though Linux' driver was doing the wrong
thing, although this is /of course/ disputed on linux-kernel. There are
too many idiots on that list. 

It was a fuss and moaning and screaming I couldn't do it when I
suggested fixing Linux's ioctl SIOCGIFNETMASK interface to look at the
interface name AND ADDRESS (for 4.4BSD style IP aliases that you do with
"ip addr add..."  but not with the Solaris-ish ifconfig), so I did it,
showed it was safe to do, and the network maintainers were reasonable
enough to un-break Postfix and other BSD-developed applications that
way. I fear the same now happens with the binfmt_script discussion, and
I also fear I'd better not brought this up but sneaked the patch past
Alan, Linus and Marcelo...

-- 
Matthias Andree