Contents
IA64 Linux Q&A
Please add questions and answers to this page, with Questions prefixed by 'Q' and answers with 'A'.
General
Q. How do I get my question answered?
A. At the bottom of this page is an edit this page link. Use it, then add your question, in the #NewQuestions section.
Q. What are some other good sources of information on Linux on the Itanium Processor Platform?
A. Try:
The Gelato federation website
The FAQ on the Gelato.org website
The IA64 kernel mailing list http://lists.linuxia64.org
Vendors' websites (e.g., http://www.intel.com http://www.hp.com http://www.sgi.com etc) for the product details for your platform.
Kernel compilation
Q. Why are my built kernel and .o files so big?
A. The standard patches that David Mosberger-Tang puts out have -g in the gcc flags; which has the advantage that one can use gdb to poke around in the vmlinux file; but the disadvantage that the files grow a lot.
Just find the -g in the top-level Makefile and delete it.
You might also be forgetting to make a compressed kernel. Make sure your build target is compressed
Q. What compilers work to compile the Linux kernel?
A. gcc 2.96 and gcc 3.x (x>2) both work. IA64 now needs a compiler after 3.2. There are rumours that the Intel C compiler will also be able to compile the kernel soon.
Kernel Internals
Q. What's a good book to bring me up to speed with IA64 Linux?
A. There really is only one, but luckily it is good. IA-64 Linux Kernel -- design and implementation by David Mosberger and Stéphane Eranian Mosberger/Eranian book
Q. How can I open/read/write/close files from within the Kernel?
A. See KernelFileIO
Q. Execution Protection
- I was reading El Reg this morning when they discussed "execution protection" on the new Intel (IA64) and AMD (K8 and above) chips. Does the Linux kernel have support for preventing execution of certain memory regions on those architectures? (Joseph Pingenot)
A. Yes, on ia64, data and stack do not get mapped executable by default. Also, return addresses (under the discretion of the compiler) are virtually always stored on a separate register stack, making it more difficult to use memory stack overflows to overwrite return addresses. (David Mosberger)
IA-64 Hardware
Q. Where are the hardware and architecture manuals for IA64?
Q. What exactly does IPF stand for?
A. Itanium Processor Family. But it has been seen written as Intel processor family in some documentation, but this may have been a typo.
Q. What are Lion and Big Sur ?
A. Code names for IA64 Systems. Big Sur is an i2000 (a rebadged Intel system with one or two processors); Lion is an rx4610 (also a rebadged Intel system, AFAIK; a four processor machine).There's also Tiger which I think is an SMP Itanium-II machine from Intel.
Q. Who makes Itanium servers/workstations?
A. Intel maintains a list on their website for servers and workstations.
Clustering
Good places to find clustering information are:
The Alinka clustering newsletter http://lcic.org/alinka.html
New Questions
