x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Paul Jakma
paul at dishone.st
Wed Dec 16 19:35:49 UTC 2009
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Debarshi Ray wrote:
> He is just pointing out that there is lot more work to do than you
> think. In other words he is contesting your claim that "The kernel
> side apparently works fine AFAICT".
Well, I don't really know how to else to counter "there may be
unknown bugs". Kernel sub-system interfaces generally are
well-designed and specified (i.e. explicit widths of fields). Booting
a system and using it for a while exercises many of the important
ones.
Could there be bugs in some lesser-used, oddball interface? Of course
(and I am sure there are - I think I gave an example in a thread
earlier this year). They're likely to reasonably trivial bugs though
(oversights in the interface specification, e.g. a 'long' instead of
a __u32, etc). If there really are interfaces that are so messed up
that they'd be hard to fix up, then that's probably a warning sign
that the code may have deeper, bigger problems.
People who run into such bugs can always go back to a 32bit kernel
(standard or PAE) until it's fixed, if it even affects them. They're
put back in the same position as they're in now, which I'm sure must
be acceptable.
Anyway.. I'll try look into this again later next year, and see if I
can fix the "bugs" (in the RFE sense for yum, libvirt) I found. Was
simply hoping to get other people interested in 32-on-64, no more or
less.
regards,
--
Paul Jakma paul at jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
"Do you believe in intuition?"
"No, but I have a strange feeling that someday I will."
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