Re: [PATCH xen-unstable] Remove PSE flag from guest CR4

[Dave McCracken <dcm@mccr.org>]

On Monday 14 September 2009, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
> On 09/14/09 10:53, Dave McCracken wrote:
> > Linux assumes it will just work.
> >
> > Since hugepages in Linux are an optional feature the kernel will boot
> > even on a machine that doesn't support PSE.  Applications that use
> > hugepages will get a nasty error.
> 
> That sounds like a Linux bug; at the very least, it sounds very fragile
> to rely on this behaviour.

Perhaps, but hugepages has always worked like that.  I think the reality is 
that any machine small enough/old enough to not support PSE is way too small 
for hugepages to be useful on it, so no one tries to run it on those machines.

Dave McCracken