[coLinux-devel] Stability and the Gentoo image

[Dan A. <da...@gm...>]

Hello,

I've temporarily hidden away the Gentoo image that Pat released last 
week from the sourceforge page due to instabilities of that image 
running under the latest coLinux version. The image itself is not to 
blame. Currently, both Linux kernel and userspace code compiled with 
-march=i686 that runs under coLinux may cause the host machine to 
spontaneously reboot. 

I was anticipating this problem quite ahead and I am glad it occured
with easy reproducibility. The cause of the problem resides in the code 
which handles the switches between Linux and Windows. It doesn't 
preserve the entire the state of the processor. There are FPU, MMX, 
3Dnow!, SSE, SSE2, and sysenter registers (plus non maskable interrupts 
that need to be disabled during this switch and in the coLinux context).

This problem goes to the top of priorities regarding development, along 
with any instability issue that could arise. I am going to dedicate time 
for solving this, any i386 expert's help would be appreciated.

-- 
Dan Aloni
da...@gm...