Update kernel version reported by uname -r

[thundergolfer]

Description

Currently gVisor reports the kernel version as 4.4.0 and this version hasn't been updated in 5+ years: ebe8001

I'm wondering about a couple things:

1. Could this version number be bumped higher?
2. Is it possible to comment on this value why the version is set at this version and what the policy is around updating it?

Is this feature related to a specific bug?

No specific bug, but a user thought we were running a very old (2016) Linux kernel and that prompted me to look into this 🙂.

Do you have a specific solution in mind?

No response

[ayushr2]

The last bump (3.11.10 -> 4.4.0) happened 6 years back: 5a0be6f.

I don't think we have any explicit policy around it yet. I agree we should probably bump it to some 6.x version now.

[thundergolfer]

Thanks, sounds good to me!

[EtiennePerot]

Bumping this version isn't just a matter of increasing the version counter; as per the last time this was done (5a0be6f), this requires also adding stub handlers for the system call numbers that were added since 4.4. This is so that error messages are more descriptive, the auto-generated syscall table remains up-to-date with the syscalls that match the kernel version number gVisor reports, and so that the telemetry for unimplemented syscalls (the counter metric that tracks the calls to unimplemented syscalls) works for those system calls. Patches welcome :)