Re: [PATCH] x86/FPU: Fix FPU handling on legacy FPU machines

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2016, Borislav Petkov wrote:

> > Obvious Ack to the patch, along with a "how did this ever work
> > before?" comment..
> 
> I had a sarcastic sentence in the commit message which I deleted later:
> 
> "Apparently no one had tried the kernel on a 486er after the FPU
> rewrite. Backwards compatibility is overrated."

 People who care do not always have the resources to make regular tests 
with their hardware.

 I for once have meant to check the original series against my 486 EISA 
box since Ingo posted them back in May last year, and I still have them 
stashed away for this purpose.  Unfortunately I didn't get to wire that 
machine for remote console access and power supply control (and I have 
since run out of ports too), so I need to physically get to its location 
to do any testing.

 So it's not unusual for bugs in the less common configurations to only 
surface a bit later on, as people get to making an upgrade.  At least we 
have `git bisect' available and individual changes recorded now, which 
makes tracking down regressions a lot easier than it used to be in the old 
days.

  Maciej