Re: wget and Zope crashes on post-2.0.6 -testing

[Robbie Dinn <robbie@microbus.com>]

Hi all

Keir Fraser wrote:
> 
> When set it causes a fault whenever the FPU is accessed. We use it to 
> lazily initialise the FPU for the currently running process. At 
> context-switch time we look at the process we are descheduling and, if 
> it hasn;t used the FPU in its time slice, we don;t save FPU state and we 
> don;t set the TS bit (because we assume it must be already set).
> 
> The last point is where we can fall down: if the TS bit in fact *isn;t* 
> set, then we are screwed for all time. The kernel will never realise a 
> process is using the FPU because we will never take the TS fault, 
> because the TS bit is clear. Thus state doesn;t get saved/restored 
> during context switch and the TS bit never gets set. So its a self 
> perpetuating state once you're in it.

I have an end user question rather than a developers Q.

Say I have an xen machine with several domains, some with kernels
that have the FPU bug fix and some without. Can a domain with
the buggy kernel upset a domain with a bug free kernel?
Or does this just affect processes within one domain?

I might want to be a bit more hasty in upgrading all the kernels
if a buggy kernel/domain can upset a good kernel/domain.