Re: PAE and i386 kernel

[Matthias Scheler <tron%zhadum.org.uk@localhost>]

On Tue, Oct 06, 2009 at 09:36:41AM -0600, Brook Milligan wrote:
> - Add more memory and then run Xen on some to provide a bunch of
>   services on different domUs.

You don't need a non-Xen PAE kernel for that.

>   I am assuming that the dom0 needs to
>   work with the entire range of memory, though; that may be incorrect.

No, it doesn't. It only needs to support the page-table format of the
Xen Hypervisor. A dom0 PAE kernel will do that.

>   Is it possible for Xen to use the entire memory when any individual
>   machine, both dom0 and any domU, can only access 4Gb of memory?

Yes, that will work fine.

> Here are the CPU features for these machines as probed by NetBSD/i386
> v4.0:
> 
>      cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
>      cpu0: Intel Xeon (686-class), 2400.17 MHz, id 0xf27
>      cpu0: features bfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR>
>      cpu0: features bfebfbff<PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX>
>      cpu0: features bfebfbff<FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,SBF>
>      cpu0: features2 400<CID>
>      cpu0: "Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.40GHz"
>      cpu0: I-cache 12K uOp cache 8-way, D-cache 8 KB 64B/line 4-way
>      cpu0: L2 cache 512 KB 64B/line 8-way
>      cpu0: ITLB 4K/4M: 128 entries
>      cpu0: DTLB 4K/4M: 64 entries
>      cpu0: using thermal monitor 1
>      cpu0: calibrating local timer
>      cpu0: apic clock running at 133 MHz
>      cpu0: 16 page colors

That looks indeed like a CPU without EMT64 support.

        Kind regards

-- 
Matthias Scheler                                  http://zhadum.org.uk/