A Kernel By Any Other Name

“For legacy reasons we standardized our environment on Ubuntu
Server. Generally when a new Ubuntu LTS release comes out, we, like
many others, start deploying any new installations on the new
release while we start planning upgrades for our most out-of-date
servers. When 10.04 (lucid) was released, we already had everything
up to 8.04 (hardy), so it it wouldn’t be terribly painful to bring
everything up to the newer release. At least that was our thinking,
but when we installed our first 10.04 server, we got a
surprise.

“Some time ago, I’d been burned by a few bugs in the x86_64
version of the kernel that weren’t in the 32 bit kernel. For years
the 32 bit code had been a lot more tried and true while x86_64
wasn’t nearly as hammered out. I’d made the decision to stick with
32 bit code everywhere possible, unless I had a specific need only
provided by the 64 bit capabilities, like a single process that
needs more than 2 gig of RAM. The new unit going in was going to be
a 32 bit instance.”

Complete
Story