On Monday, January 19 2009, Avi Kivity said:
Jeremy Katz wrote:
> That said, we currently do install the PAE kernel if you have 4 GB+ of
> RAM[1]. Switching to it by default is problematic because then we're
> back to using different kernels for different cases
You have that now, don't you? One case for <4GB and one for >=4GB.
Worse, if you install more memory, the kernel doesn't see it.
Downgrading your CPU to one which does not support PAE should be rare.
Yes, but at least the "running a different kernel" case is currently the
relatively rare one.
> and it also makes
> the 'what do you with the live image' case a lot more complex.
I'd just go with PAE here.
Can't do so -- the live image is definitely used on a lot of hardware
that isn't PAE capable. Many/most Pentium M's didn't support it, the OLPC
doesn't[1]. And those are common hardware targets for the live image
> The _real_ fix here is to get PAE runtime much like was finally
done
> with SMP :-)
Patches, as they say, are welcome.
Low-level x86 setup code isn't quite my forte... Hence I go for
goading others into doing it ;-)
But you could install both kernels
and have the bootloaded choose (sticks wax balls into ears).
Want to write code for syslinux and grub to do the auto-choosing? Then
we also have to figure out a way to shoe-horn another 50 MB of stuff
into the already full live image
Jeremy