[8503] in bugtraq
Re: [Fwd: NOTE: Solaris 7 gotcha for some ultras]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Paul Murphy)
Wed Nov 11 13:39:55 1998
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 10:37:56 +0000
Reply-To: Paul Murphy <pjm@GEMINI-RESEARCH.CO.UK>
From: Paul Murphy <pjm@GEMINI-RESEARCH.CO.UK>
To: BUGTRAQ@NETSPACE.ORG
>
>Got a surprise when I finally installed the non-beta version of Solaris 7
>on my Ultra-2 today. It booted to 32-bit mode instead of 64-bit, claiming
> my hardware defaulted to 32-bit mode.
>
> The message at boot time said to see the boot(1m) man page, so I
> looked, and there it was at the bottom:
>
> On systems containing 200MHz or lower UltraSPARC-1 proces-
> sors, it is possible for a user to run a 64-bit program
> designed to exploit a problem that could cause a processor
> to stall. Since 64-bit progams cannot run on the 32-bit
> kernel, the 32-bit kernel is chosen as the default file on
> these systems.
This shouldn't come as a surprise, since Sun are talking openly about it
in their Solaris 7 seminars for system administrators (which you _have_
attended, right?). The problem is restricted to older systems, and their
advice was that if you were at all worried about this, you should run the 32-
bit kernel for peace of mind. Later processors are unaffected.
If they'd put the 64-bit kernel in by default, you'd criticise them for leaving
a security hole in the system.....
Paul.
------------------------------------------------------
Paul J. Murphy - Head of I.T.
Gemini Research Ltd, 162 Science Park, Cambridge
Phone: 01223 435305 Fax: 01223 435301
