Re: i686 SMP systems with more then 12 GB ram with 2.4.x kernel ?

[Hugh Dickins]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> You don't neccessarily need PSE. Migrating to an option to support > 4K
> _virtual_ page size is more flexible for x86, although it would need 
> glibc getpagesize() fixing I think, and might mean a few apps wouldnt
> run in that configuration.

Larger kernel PAGE_SIZE can work, still presenting 4KB page size to user
space for compat.  The interesting part is holding anon pages together,
not fragmenting to use PAGE_SIZE for each MMUPAGE_SIZE of user space.

I have patches against 2.4.6 and 2.4.7 which did that; but didn't keep
them up to date because there's a fair effort going through drivers
deciding which PAGE_s need to be MMUPAGE_s.  I intend to resurrect
that work against 2.5 later on (or sooner if there's interest).

Hugh