[RFC 0/5] KVM: drop 32-bit host support on all architectures

[A. Wilcox]

On Dec 12, 2024, at 6:55 AM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd at kernel.org> wrote:
> From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd at arndb.de>
> 
> I submitted a patch to remove KVM support for x86-32 hosts earlier
> this month, but there were still concerns that this might be useful for
> testing 32-bit host in general, as that remains supported on three other
> architectures. I have gone through those three now and prepared similar
> patches, as all of them seem to be equally obsolete.
> 
> Support for 32-bit KVM host on Arm hardware was dropped back in 2020
> because of lack of users, despite Cortex-A7/A15/A17 based SoCs being
> much more widely deployed than the other virtualization capable 32-bit
> CPUs (Intel Core Duo/Silverthorne, PowerPC e300/e500/e600, MIPS P5600)
> combined.


I do use 32-bit KVM on a Core Duo “Yonah” and a Power Mac G4 (MDD), for
purposes of bisecting kernel issues without having to reboot the host
machine (when it can be duplicated in a KVM environment).

I suppose it would still be possible to run the hosts on 6.12 LTS for
some time with newer guests, but it would be unfortunate.

Best,
-arw


> 
> It probably makes sense to drop all of these at the same time, provided
> there are no actual users remaining (not counting regression testing
> that developers might be doing). Please let me know if you are still
> using any of these machines, or think there needs to be deprecation
> phase first.
> 
>      Arnd

--
Anna Wilcox (she/her)
SW Engineering: C++/Rust, DevOps, POSIX, Py/Ruby
Wilcox Technologies Inc.  |  Adélie Linux