> In my experience there is no way for me to enable 64BIT without somehow > manually fiddling with ARCH. > > No matter whether it's menuconfig or oldconfig or whatever else.
>From the patch description when ARCH=x86 were introduced: # make {allno,allyes,allmod,rand}config [ARCH=...] option \ host arch | 32bit | 64bit ===================================================== ./. | 32bit | 64bit ARCH=x86 | 32bit | 32bit ARCH=i386 | 32bit | 32bit ARCH=x86_64 | 64bit | 64bit The general rule are that ARCH= and native architecture takes precedence over the configuration. So make ARCH=i386 [whatever] will always build a 32-bit kernel no matter what the configuration says. The configuration will be updated to 32-bit if it was configured to 64-bit and the other way around. This behaviour is consistent with previous behaviour so no suprises here. make ARCH=x86 will per default result in a 32-bit kernel but as the only ARCH= value x86 allow the user to select between 32-bit and 64-bit using menuconfig. So what you see is what was then discussed and considered optimal functionality. We shall keep in mind the main target here is to keep peoples systems running as usual when they shift to the unified {32 bit / 64 bit} x86 arch. If you want anything changed then do this with respect to the intended behaviour as documented above and keep the setup used by our less kernel skilled testers in mind. And you do not belong to the "less kernel skilled" testers base. Sam -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/