On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 01:06:25AM +0900, Yoshinori K. Okuji wrote:
> I don't know any reliable way. Some candidates:
>
> - The ramdisk max value. On 32-bit, initrd may not be loaded onto over 2GB.
> This is hard to change in Linux, so we can expect that this will not change.
> On 64-bit, currently, the max is 4GB-1. It is likely that this value will not
> change, but who knows.
This could be possible, but doesn't sound very reliable.
> - The long mode panic message. This exists only for x86_64. But the message
> might change some day.
Actually, it seems to have changed recently. Doesn't seem too reliable
either.
> - Otherwise, we could probe some opcodes and see if 64-bit opcodes are used.
> This would be error-prone.
Same here :-(
However, this is not as large a problem as it seems. Most users install GRUB
to disk through their distribution, which already provides the right Linux
builds in /boot. It could be a problem with removable media, but:
- It's easy to solve this when you have a "cpuid" command and know what
each of the files you put in the CD is. This also allows for a more
user-friendly error message than a Linux panic.
- GRUB is rarely used there anyway (most GNU/Linux distros opt for
isolinux)
--
Robert Millan
The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."
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