Re: [PATCH] x86/FPU: Fix FPU handling on legacy FPU machines

From: Maciej W. Rozycki
Date: Tue Mar 22 2016 - 18:03:52 EST


On Fri, 11 Mar 2016, Borislav Petkov wrote:

> > Obvious Ack to the patch, along with a "how did this ever work
> > before?" comment..
>
> I had a sarcastic sentence in the commit message which I deleted later:
>
> "Apparently no one had tried the kernel on a 486er after the FPU
> rewrite. Backwards compatibility is overrated."

People who care do not always have the resources to make regular tests
with their hardware.

I for once have meant to check the original series against my 486 EISA
box since Ingo posted them back in May last year, and I still have them
stashed away for this purpose. Unfortunately I didn't get to wire that
machine for remote console access and power supply control (and I have
since run out of ports too), so I need to physically get to its location
to do any testing.

So it's not unusual for bugs in the less common configurations to only
surface a bit later on, as people get to making an upgrade. At least we
have `git bisect' available and individual changes recorded now, which
makes tracking down regressions a lot easier than it used to be in the old
days.

Maciej