David Woodhouse wrote:

> If you make it generic so that qemu can use it for emulating i386 even
> on machines like ppc64, perhaps it would be saner.
> 

There is already an architecture independent solution to the problem - 
set_fs_altroot(). The only problem is that it's not easily accessible 
from userland. Accessing it via set_personality() works only if there 
are multiple exec domains.

I can't see how anyone would accept a patch that adds linux-i386 exec 
domain in generic code.

Christoph doesn't like the idea of adding exec-domains just for this 
purpose and has suggested adding a new system call to set the altroot. A 
prototype patch to do this already exists. I will be cleaning it up and 
  posting it to LKML later this week. The main purpose of moving the 
discussion to LKML was to see how receptive people were to the proposed 
new system call.

So far I haven't heard anyone complaining :)

	-Arun

PS: Prototype patch with known bugs attached.