Re: Solaris 10 U2 installation failure

[Avi Kivity <avi-atKUWr5tajBWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org>]

Parag Warudkar wrote:
> Avi Kivity <avi@...> writes:
>
>
>   
>> 32-bin kvm userspace can run a 64-bit guest, if you're using a 64-bit os 
>> kernel, hence the 64-bit registers. Just ignore the 64-bit parts.
>>
>>     
>
> Didn't understand. Allow me to clarify a bit -
>
> I am running a 32-bit Host OS (Linux i386) on a purely 32-bit CPU (Core Duo). 
> Solaris installation will first check if the processor is 64-bit capable and
> only then install a 64-bit kernel. In that case, when Solaris asks KVM if the
> CPU is 64-bit, is KVM lying to it even though the host CPU on which it is
> running is NOT 64-bit capable and then emulating all AMD64 instructions without
> any help from the host CPU? That sounds more confusing!
>
> Even if it does something like that is there a way to tell KVM not to pretend
> like it is running a 64-bit CPU? I don't want to run Solaris in 64-bit mode as I
> am running on 32-bit host with just 512Mb of total memory.
>   

No, kvm doesn't pretend to be a 64-bit cpu when it isn't.

There are three cases wrt host bitness. Two are straightforward:

32-bit host: kvm pretends to be a 32-bit cpu whether the cpu supports 
long mode or not.
64-bit host: the cpu supports long mode, and we pass that on to the guest.

There is a third case: 64-bit host kernel but 32-bit qemu.  In that 
case, we also support 64-bit guests.

Because of that last case, 32-bit qemu is compiled with support for 
64-bit guests.  That means that even in a pure 32-bit environment, qemu 
has 64-bit registers (even though it can't make use of them).

If you're running a 32-bit environment, simply ignore r8-r15 and the 
high 32 bits of other registers.  That's what kvm.ko does :)

-- 
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function


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