[systemd-devel] Illegal CPUID instruction causes systemd core dump

[D.S. Ljungmark]

If you want I can bring a small form factor early x86 to Fosdem.

Industrial, rugged little things with x86 chipset was rather popular
for a while, and you can still order them new.  The ones I have aren't
i486 but a 586 (cyrix, I think).

On Thu, Dec 28, 2017 at 8:26 PM, Reindl Harald <h.reindl at thelounge.net> wrote:
>
>
> Am 28.12.2017 um 20:07 schrieb tedheadster:
>>
>> I am doing regression testing on old hardware. systemd-233 just
>> generated the following error on startup:
>>
>> I believe it is getting an illegal instruction trap on this first
>> generation 486 because it is calling "cpuid" in detect_vm_cpuid()
>> without first checking if the hardware supports it; it doesn't in this
>> case.
>>
>> The gcc compiler provides a workaround in the cpuid.h header file. You
>> can call __get_cpuid_max() first and check the return value > 0.
>>
>>
>> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14266772/how-do-i-call-cpuid-in-linux#14266932
>>
>> The Linux kernel still supports the 486 so we have to code around this
>> case, even if it is ancient hardware
>
>
> don't get me wrong - i am for 15 years now in the IT and my first PC in 1999
> was a i686
>
> i don't see how a brand new systemd and a mordern userland is supposed to
> run on 20 years or older hardware where nearly eveyr distribution these days
> is i586 or i686 only or starts to drop 32bit at all
>
> if you have that old hardware normally you don't use leading edge software
> on it and as a user (not systemd developer) i would love to see erevry
> single line of code for 20 years old hardware is removed to make it cleaner
> and in doubt faster on recent systems
>
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