NX bit: AMD vs Intel?

Gilboa Davara gilboad at gmail.com
Fri Mar 31 14:09:50 UTC 2006


On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 12:56 +0200, Jurgen Kramer wrote:
> On my Intel system (Xeon with EMT64 support) which runs the 32-bit
> version of FC5 I can see that NX support is active (from dmesg):
> 
> NX (Execute Disable) protection: active
> 
> On my other system, a AMD64 system running the 64-bit version of FC4,
> there is no message regarding NX support being enabled of disabled at
> all.
> 
> Checking init.c in the kernel sources it seems that NX support is
> depended on PAE support and NX support from the processor. As the AMD
> processor supports both I aspect to see a NX procection active message
> on my AMD system as well. Does NX support suppose to work on 64-bit
> kernels ?
> 
> Both systems run kernel 2.6.16.
> 
> Jurgen
> 

AFAICS, It's activated quietly if present on iAMD64 systems.
No printk code.

So, if /proc/cpuinfo includes nx, you're in the clear.

Gilboa




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