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ia32 kernel on amd64 box?

DISCUSSION [email protected] 5 participants 6 messages Apr 25, 2003 – Apr 28, 2003

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Hello All,
Does anyone know if an ia32 kernel (specifically the one that comes with
Red Hat 7.2) will work on an SMP AMD Opteron machine?
I know someone will want to know why I would want to, so here is the
explanation. I want to evaluate the opteron port of Linux at work. Buying the Opteron machine is less risky if I can fall back to 32 bit Linux if the 64 bit port does not work well. This is particularly true since the 64 bit servers do not seem to cost much more than similar Pentium machines.

Thanks,

Jim

#1 lore raw
Quoted 3 lines · [email protected] ([email protected]) said:

Hello All,
Does anyone know if an ia32 kernel (specifically the one that comes with
Red Hat 7.2) will work on an SMP AMD Opteron machine?

Red Hat 7.2 may or may not work, I'm not sure we've tried back that far. Red Hat 8.0 or 9 should work fine.

Bill

#2 lore raw
Quoted 1 line · Bill Nottingham

Red Hat 7.2 may or may not work, I'm not sure we've tried back that far.

Why - is there anything at all missing from the AMD64's x86 compatibility, prior to activating 64 bit mode?

Or is it just that it should work, but you haven't tested it?

-- Jamie

#3 lore raw
Quoted 15 lines · Jamie Lokier
Quoted 3 lines · Bill Nottingham

Red Hat 7.2 may or may not work, I'm not sure we've tried back that far.

Why - is there anything at all missing from the AMD64's x86 compatibility, prior to activating 64 bit mode?

Or is it just that it should work, but you haven't tested it?

How about peripheral compatibility?

#4 lore raw
In reply to Jamie Lokier
Quoted 6 lines · Jamie Lokier
Quoted 1 line

Red Hat 7.2 may or may not work, I'm not sure we've tried back that far.

Why - is there anything at all missing from the AMD64's x86 compatibility, prior to activating 64 bit mode?

Or is it just that it should work, but you haven't tested it?

Nothing's wrong from the x86 compat standpoint, it's more device support I'm unsure about (and that I haven't tested it.)

Bill

#5 lore raw
In reply to [email protected]
Quoted 3 lines · [email protected] writes:

Hello All,
Does anyone know if an ia32 kernel (specifically the one that comes with
Red Hat 7.2) will work on an SMP AMD Opteron machine?

Any 32-bit x86 kernel should work on an AMD Opteron machine. The only question is whether all drivers are supported. Red Hat 7.2 might not have support for all the hardware that is in an AMD Opteron ystem.

Quoted 6 lines

I know someone will want to know why I would want to, so here is the
explanation. I want to evaluate the opteron port of Linux at work. Buying the Opteron machine is less risky if I can fall back to 32 bit Linux if the 64 bit port does not work well. This is particularly true since the 64 bit servers do not seem to cost much more than similar Pentium machines.

SuSE Linux 8.2/x86 works on AMD Opteron systems and I guess current Red Hat distributions do work also,

Andreas

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 Andreas Jaeger
  SuSE Labs [email protected]
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    http://www.suse.de/~aj