Re: [PATCH] make vt_ioctl ix86isms explicit

[James Simmons]

> > sys_ioperm is only implemented on x86 (i386/x86_64).  Make the
> > ifdefs in vt_ioctl.c more explicit so the other architectures can
> > get rid of their stubs in favour of just using sys_ni_syscall in
> > the syscall table.  (Personally I still wonder why they added it
> > at all but that's another question..)
> 
> They were added because this was how the X server got IO permissions a 
> million years ago.  It comes from some random old UNIX/386 thing, it 
> predates Linux itself as far as I know.
> 
> I'm fairly certain that X itself no longer uses it at all, but there may
> be other programs that still do (unlikely). Your patch looks sane,
> although it might be equally sane to just remove the code altogether.

I suggest we remove it. It was the old way to access the VGA register 
ports.