Comment 4 for bug 272204

I didn't get a reply from the author yet. Not sure how to proceed from there but just in case I've build a debdiff too. (My first one, please feel free to rip it apart and reuse the pieces :).

The patch itself seems rather benign to me. Just two lines changed:

For the "create_proc_entry" line see
http://www.kernel.org/doc/htmldocs/procfs-guide.html#regularfile
Quote: "To create a file in the root of the procfs, use NULL as parent parameter"

For the second change "remove_proc_entry" there is no explicit mention of NULL parent pointers in procfs-guide, but checking the source at
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=fs/proc/generic.c#l752
and
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=fs/proc/generic.c;#l277
reveals that (no longer exported) proc_root is used internally if parent is NULL.

So, as far as I can tell this patch has little potential for side effects.