Re: ia32 kernel on amd64 box?

Andi Kleen
2003-04-28T16:48:23Z

Jeffrey Baker <jwbaker@acm.org> writes:

> I was wondering the same thing about peripherals. The
> README in aic79xx driver from adaptec states that the driver
> is supported on x86 only. So I was wary to spec model 39320
> HBAs in x86-64 machines. I'm sure Adaptec is using the term
> "support" in the most corporate sense possible, but what if
> it really does scribble the disk under SuSE 64-bit kernel?

The AIC 7xxx driver works fine. It should work on the same hardware as
79xx.

The biggest AMD64 issue with drivers is normally IOMMU support, but
that only needs to concern you when you have more than 4GB of memory
and the hardware does not support 64bit Addresses. The Adaptec
hardware supports 64bit addresses.

What's a problem is the "Adaptec RAID" - which uses the dpt_i2o driver.
That driver is not 64bit safe and doesn't work and is disabled.

-Andi