On Fri, Jun 21, 2024 at 02:05:17PM +0200, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
On Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 11:21:14AM GMT, John Levon wrote:
Older 32-bit Linux VMs (including Ubuntu 16.10) have issues with the 64-bit pci io window, failing during boot with errors like:
Turns out it apparently can't deal with PCI bars mapped above 16TB (aka 44 phys-bits). Test patch below.
Thanks for the patch, I can confirm this also works with Ubuntu 14.04 (oldest we had to hand) as well as a couple of 32-bit Windows VMs. This is a much better fix!
Even the LTS version from that year (16.04) is not supported any more.
Even 14.04 is not yet end of life. If you're prepared to pay, they'll still support you. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
Well. Why people would use *that* ubuntu version is not clear to me. It's *loooooong* out of support.
You're in the IT dept of a large corporation. You have some critical application running on some old Dell server with Ubuntu 16.04. A move to virtualization has been mandated across the org, so you need to decommission that server. The application was built by some contractor - before your time - and the source code was long lost, due to a misadventure with a misconfigured array - again before your time.
You've tried to use a newer version, but the application depends on lots of libraries that didn't take compatibility seriously (like, say, GNOME), so it simply can't run on newer versions. You've tried for some time to work around this by building and installing dependencies but you're not an expert on dynamic linkers, and could never get that last C++ symbol to resolve.
There's no funding to build a new replacement for the app. You're aware that the OS is out of full support, so you do your best to lock down any network access and mitigate the relevant CVEs.
Now you try to upgrade your virtualization cluster, and your VM doesn't boot any more.
This kind of situation is very common. It's Long tail is long :(
regards john