Castor's patch fixed a 2.x gcc compiler failure here because of the inadvertant double semi-colon: @@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ kernel_init(int when) { int i; - char *p1, *p2, buf[BUFSIZE];; + char *p1, *p2, buf[BUFSIZE]; struct syment *sp1, *sp2; ...which I wasn't aware of, since I haven't been testing builds with that era compiler for a some time now. But in doing so, I see that gcc 2.96 won't compile diskdump.c either: cc -c -g -DX86 -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 diskdump.c In file included from diskdump.c:24: diskdump.h:49: array size missing in `tasks' make[3]: *** [diskdump.o] Error 1 because of the tasks member at the end of this struct: struct disk_dump_header { char signature[SIG_LEN]; /* = "DISKDUMP" */ int header_version; /* Dump header version */ struct new_utsname utsname; /* copy of system_utsname */ struct timeval timestamp; /* Time stamp */ unsigned int status; /* Above flags */ int block_size; /* Size of a block in byte */ int sub_hdr_size; /* Size of arch dependent header in blocks */ unsigned int bitmap_blocks; /* Size of Memory bitmap in block */ unsigned int max_mapnr; /* = max_mapnr */ unsigned int total_ram_blocks;/* Number of blocks should be written */ unsigned int device_blocks; /* Number of total blocks in * the dump device */ unsigned int written_blocks; /* Number of written blocks */ unsigned int current_cpu; /* CPU# which handles dump */ int nr_cpus; /* Number of CPUs */ struct task_struct *tasks[]; }; Can this be changed to: struct task_struct **tasks; and get away with it?