Tails

#3 Updated by intrigeri 2015-01-01 18:44:04

• How much would it add to the ISO size to add a third kernel? Note that it would also bloat most IUKs quite a bit. Given how few SMP 32-bit systems are still in use these days, and the relatively low benefit of giving them access to their 2nd core, I doubt it’s worth making the upgrade UX worse for everyone.
• Requiring PAE would kill support for some more recent CPUs too, e.g. the ThinkPad X32 generation: not all CPUs post Pentium III have PAE => not sure the 2nd option is acceptable yet. I think that’s strongly related to Feature #8183.
• The 3rd option (get SMP into Debian’s “586” kernel) seems interesting. Can you try building such a kernel and see if it works?

#4 Updated by intrigeri 2016-06-08 08:52:58

FWIW, the –586 kernel is gone in Debian’s 4.x, there’s now –686 and –686-pae. If I understand the source right, both have SMP enabled, so we’ll get 32-bit SMP for free when we resolve Feature #10298. I’m going to express that in Redmine-speak.

Except that 1. I didn’t check if the X60 work with that –686 kernel so that might or might not be enough to solve the use case this ticket was created for; and 2. given how Feature #10298 is slowed down by Feature #8183, it might be that in the end we switch to 64-bit userspace at the same time as to Linux 4.x, and then this ticket is moot.

#8 Updated by Dr_Whax 2016-07-21 16:38:51

I tested this out on an Thinkpad x60 with the Intel l2400(http://ark.intel.com/fr/products/27229/Intel-Core-Duo-Processor-L2400-2M-Cache-1_66-GHz-667-MHz-FSB), I see two CPU’s appearing in /proc/cpuinfo.

However, when attempting to shutdown the machine, I got a kernel panic on memory wiping, something that didn’t happen before.

See kernel panic log here: http://jurrevanbergen.nl/x60_smp_kernel_panic.jpg

#9 Updated by intrigeri 2016-07-22 05:05:25

> I tested this out on an Thinkpad x60 with the Intel l2400(http://ark.intel.com/fr/products/27229/Intel-Core-Duo-Processor-L2400-2M-Cache-1_66-GHz-667-MHz-FSB), I see two CPU’s appearing in /proc/cpuinfo.

Thanks, so this problem will be solved by the topic branch. Good!

> However, when attempting to shutdown the machine, I got a kernel panic on memory wiping, something that didn’t happen before. I’ll make a separate ticket for that.

It’s worth documenting on known issues, but other than that, I doubt that opening a ticket about that will be a good use of our time (and todo list), unless this regression occurs on a lot more hardware.