linux-kernel - Not-so-old machines without PAE was Re: 32-bit PTI with THP = userspace corruption

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Date:   Tue, 23 Oct 2018 11:11:27 +0200
From:   Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
To:     Alan Cox <gnomes@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc:     Joerg Roedel <jroedel@...e.de>, Meelis Roos <mroos@...ux.ee>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Linux Kernel list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-mm@...ck.org, Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Not-so-old machines without PAE was Re: 32-bit PTI with THP =
 userspace corruption

On Mon 2018-10-22 19:48:17, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 09:56:42 +0200
> Joerg Roedel <jroedel@...e.de> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 02:37:45PM +0200, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > > On Tue 2018-09-18 14:00:30, Alan Cox wrote:  
> > > > There are pretty much no machines that don't support PAE and are still
> > > > even vaguely able to boot a modern Linux kernel. The oddity is the
> > > > Pentium-M but most distros shipped a hack to use PAE on the Pentium M
> > > > anyway as it seems to work fine.  
> > > 
> > > I do have some AMD Geode here, in form of subnotebook. Definitely
> > > newer then Pentium Ms, but no PAE...  
> > 
> > Are the AMD Geode chips affected by Meltdown?
> 
> Geode for AMD was just a marketing name.
> 
> The AMD athlon labelled as 'Geode' will behave like any other Athlon but
> I've not seen anyone successfully implement Meltdown on the Athlon so it's
> probably ok. 
> 
> The earlier NatSemi ones are not AFAIK vulnerable to either. The later
> ones might do Spectre (they have branch prediction which is disabled on
> the earlier ones) but quite possibly not enough to be attacked usefully -
> and you can turn it off anyway if you care.
> 
> And I doubt your subnotebook can usefully run modern Linux since the
> memory limit on most Geode was about 64MB.

Well, let me see. The machine is not too useful because of dead
battery, but I don't believe RAM would be a problem. It has 512MB or
more, IIRC. Missing PAE is, and missing instructions are. And horrible
keyboard and bad driver support from Linux. And... Ouch and fact that
I use its power supply to power something else.

It looks similar to this:
https://hexus.net/tech/news/laptop/13994-kohjinsha-launches-impressive-subnotebook-twist/
(but has no touchscreen).

Bios is "built 03/02/2007".

CPU is "AuthenticAMD" family 5 model 10, "Geode(TM) Integrated Processor
by AMD PCS". 500 MHz, flags "fpu de pse tsc msr cx8 sep pge cmov
clflush mmx mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow". 512MB RAM.

This is not a suitable compile server, but still could work as a
subnotebook given right software...


									Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

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