Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 10:00:27AM -0800, Zachary Amsden wrote: > >> Introduce the basic VMI sub-arch configuration dependencies. VMI kernels only >> are designed to run on modern hardware platforms. As such, they require a >> working APIC, and do not support some legacy functionality, including APM BIOS, >> ISA and MCA bus systems, PCI BIOS interfaces, or PnP BIOS (by implication of >> dropping ISA support). They also require a P6 series CPU. >> > > That's pretty bad because distributors need another kernel still. At least > a working APIC isn't quite as common today as it should. > It doesn't need to be a fully functional APIC. It just needs to not have one particular bug - Pentium processor erratum 11AP. There is no reason that most of these requirements can't be dropped. We used to have a lot more functionality and legacy support turned off, and we gradually turned it back on. Turning on the BIOS interfaces will cause complications for a VMI kernel running in a hypervisor - since it can't invoke non-virtualized BIOS code. So it does require a bit of conditional logic, which is pretty easy, but we haven't got around to doing yet. Zach
