Re: [PATCH 0/6] i386 virtualization patches, Set 3

[Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 03:58:09PM -0700, zach@vmware.com wrote:
> I was going to attempt to clean up the math-emu code to make it use the
> nice new segment and descriptor table accessors, but it quickly became
> apparent that this would be a long, tedious, error prone process that
> would eventually result in the death of a large section of my brain.
> In addition, it is not very fun to test this on the actual hardware it
> is designed to run on (although I did manage to track down a 386 with
> detachable i387 coprocessor, the owner is not sure it still boots).
> Someday it would be nice to have an audit of this code; it appears to
> be riddled with bugs relating to segmentation, for example it assumes
> LDT segments on overrides, does not use the mm->context semaphore to
> protect LDT access, and generally looks scarily out of date in both
> function and appearance.

Perhaps the best would be to just remove it. Near all 386s should be far
beyond their MTBF by now. Mark it CONFIG_BROKEN and if nobody complains for 
one or two releases remove it completely.

The ugly verify_area 386 bugfix workaround code could go at the same
time.

-Andi