Re: [PATCH 00/31 v2] PTI support for x86_32

[Adam Borowski]

On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 12:22:59PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:15 AM, Adam Borowski <kilobyte@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Alas, we got some data:
> > https://popcon.debian.org/ says 20% of x86 users have i386 as their main ABI
> > (current; people with popcon installed).
> 
> One of the issues I've seen is that people often simply move a disk
> (or copy an installation) when upgrading machines.

Less skilled users (ie, most of them) had until recently a different hurdle:
the "32-bit" option was shown way too prominently, without an explanation.

> Does Debian make it easy to upgrade to a 64-bit kernel if you have a
> 32-bit install?

Quite easy, yeah.  Crossgrading userspace is not for the faint of the heart,
but changing just the kernel is fine.

> Because if not, then it's entirely possible that a lot
> of people started out with a 32-bit install (maybe they even had a
> 64-bit kernel, but they started when the 32-bit install was the
> default one), and never upgraded their kernel.
> 
> It really should be easy to _just_ upgrade the kernel. But if the
> distro doesn't support it, most people won't do it.

I just realized that, for people who use distro kernels, the right way is a
message during upgrade.  Ie, it's up to the packagers rather than you.

Having a dire-sounding printk, though, would still be nice.


Meow!
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