Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759165AbYG2Rq4 (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:46:56 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751811AbYG2Rqr (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:46:47 -0400 Received: from gw.goop.org ([64.81.55.164]:49698 "EHLO mail.goop.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750932AbYG2Rqq (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:46:46 -0400 Message-ID: <488F5781.2030909@goop.org> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:46:41 -0700 From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080501) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Cliff Wickman CC: Nick Piggin , steiner@sgi.com, mingo@elte.hu, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Comments on UV tlb flushing References: <488E644B.10801@goop.org> <200807291412.18495.nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> <20080729133204.GA13138@sgi.com> <488F2C9B.9070306@goop.org> <20080729173420.GA18296@sgi.com> In-Reply-To: <20080729173420.GA18296@sgi.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1813 Lines: 36 Cliff Wickman wrote: > I don't know much about x86 configuration options. It looks like > CONFIG_X86_GENERICARCH is fairly new, so I don't know where to look > for samples of how it will be set by RH and SuSE. > No, it's a very old option. Certainly the Fedora Rawhide kernel I have sitting here has it set, and I'm pretty sure RHEL always has it set, since it's necessary to support the big iron hardware that people like to run RHEL on. Basically, if a distro doesn't have it set, then they don't want to support big machines like yours and you should just recommend your customers use something else. There are a lot of other config options which will affect whether a kernel is suitable for your hardware, like max cpus. A "desktop only" distro might set max cpus to 8 or 16, which I assume would be disappointingly small for someone who's just bought a 4k cpu machine. > But if the tlb_uv.o code should be present in "every" distro x86 kernel > I don't see the point of having to configure it in. Why not just > configure it out for small (embedded) kernels? Because it's not an binary thing. Lots of people who are compiling their own kernels for specialized uses don't set CONFIG_EMBEDDED, but also don't want a kitchen sink kernel. 6k isn't that much, but if every obscure platform enabled some always-on code it rapidly starts to build up. Basically, if you want to make sure if you're going to get some level of distro support, you need to make contact with the distros directly and talk about what you'd like them to do. J -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/