On Thu, 2007-02-08 at 08:44 +0000, Kevin Kofler wrote: > Sean Bruno <sean.bruno <at> dsl-only.net> writes: > > What is the relationship between 'Execshield hardware NX/XD bit support' > > and a x86_64 version of linux? I'm not sure I followed your statement, > > but I would like to know more. > > The NX/XD bit is only supported if you have both: > * an x86_64 or i686 PAE kernel (not a regular i686 one), > * a CPU which supports that bit, most of which are 64-bit. > > As to why only Fedora, Fedora has kernel patches (ExecShield), which might > change how the bit is used, though I'm not sure about that. (Apparently, some > hardware NX/XD support is in the upstream kernel, just not approximation by the > code segment limit on non-NX/XD-enabled x86.) Another reason may be that other > distributions ship older kernels than Fedora does (which might also explain why > it works on FC5). > > But it might not be an NX/XD issue at all, as I said, it's just a wild guess. > > Kevin Kofler > Thanks for the explanation. If I wanted to test this, would I just grab 2.6.19 or .20 from kernel.org and compile/install it using my fedora kernel config? Sean
