[PATCH 0/1] [Jaunty] LP#74179 -- support for i386 machines with >3GB RAM

[Tim Gardner]

Andy Whitcroft wrote:
> We are seeing increasing complaints that users are failing to be able
> to use all their RAM when installing more than 3GB of RAM when running
> the i386 kernels.  This is due to the RAM being placed at greater than
> 4GB physical addresses; it is common to have RAM from 0-3GB and at 5GB
> physical when installing only 4GB.  In order to access this RAM we need
> to enable PAE, but this is a non-trivial change for the common user.
> The server flavour does have PAE enabled, but is not optimised for the
> desktop and users are unwilling to use it.  They should be running 64bit
> kernels but that is probabally not quite as seamless as it should be yet.
> 
> Therefore I am proposing we create a new i386 only flavour generic64g
> which is identicle to the generic flavour except that it enables PAE and
> options that that requires.
> 
> Following this email is a patch implementing this for Jaunty.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> -apw
> 
> Andy Whitcroft (1):
>   UBUNTU: add a i386 generic64g flavour supporting large memory systems
> 
>  debian/config/i386/config.generic64g |   24 +++++++++++++++
>  debian/control                       |   54 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  debian/control.d/vars.generic64g     |    6 ++++
>  debian/control.stub                  |   54 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  debian/rules.d/i386.mk               |    2 +-
>  5 files changed, 139 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
>  create mode 100644 debian/config/i386/config.generic64g
>  create mode 100644 debian/control.d/vars.generic64g
> 
> 

I am not in favor of another flavor. Despite the reluctance of some
folks to use the server flavour, it _does_ solve their use case with no
effort on our part. If these users are that sensitive to the
optimization differences between generic and server, then they'll have
to run a 64 bit kernel.

My goal is to actually reduce the i386 flavours for Jaunty+1 to just
generic. Hardy should be the last LTS that supports a 32 bit server.

rtg
-- 
Tim Gardner tim.gardner at canonical.com