Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 6 Oct 2009 07:26:53 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: 2.6.32-rc3: low mem - only 378MB on x86_32 with 64GB. Why? |
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On Tue, 6 Oct 2009, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 17:30 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > In fact, I wish more people did that, just so that we'd get better > > coverage of the 32-bit compat code. We occasionally find issues there, > > although I think it's getting rarer. > > We've been running PPC64 with 32-bit userspace for a long time, so most > of the issues with the 32-bit compat code ought to be dealt with. > > There may be a few arch-specific issues for x86_64/i386, but not many.
The Intel Xorg guys used to do everything in 32-bit kernels because they were also testing that they didn't break compatibility (which is a big deal with that whole crazy DRM-in-kernel/direct-rendering-in-user-space thing) and seemingly didn't realize that the compat layer was _supposed_ to mean that they could run a 64-bit kernel and still have a working 32-bit land.
It's driver interfaces like that that tend to break. ioctl's etc. But I have heard less noise about it lately, so I do think it's mostly working.
Linus
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