http://lwn.net/Articles/87814/ This is a special feed containing comments posted to the individual LWN article titled "x86 NX support". hourly 2 http://lwn.net/Articles/88923/rss 2004-06-10T08:34:08+00:00 job <blockquote><em>a longstanding x86 security weakness will be no more</em></blockquote><p>Is this really true? Pages being non-executable has been implemented by PaX and other patches for years. Linus did not want to merge it because it only changes the way you have to write the exploits, not the possibility of the exploits themselves -- as he convincingly demonstrated on lkml. Has something changed since then or is this security-by-obscurity again?</p> http://lwn.net/Articles/87968/rss 2004-06-03T14:32:08+00:00 knobunc The quickstart document cited in the article says:<br> <pre> - make sure you have a CPU that has the NX feature. Such CPUs are: all 64-bit variants of AMD (Athlon64, Opteron), future CPUs of Intel, Transmeta and VIA. (NOTE: 64-bit x86_64 kernels already make use of the 64-bit variant of the NX feature - this patch is only meant for 32-bit x86 kernels and distributions.) </pre> So you do have to have a compatible processor. This change adds protection when you are running a 32-bit kernel.<br> -ben http://lwn.net/Articles/87942/rss 2004-06-03T12:29:31+00:00 lacostej How is the support in other OSes for this function? http://lwn.net/Articles/87892/rss 2004-06-03T09:47:33+00:00 hansl <br> &gt; Well, at least for those running x86-64 machines. The masses of us <br> &gt; still running plain old 32-bit x86 machines get no joy. <br> <br>No, as I understand it a 32bit x86 processor with PAE support <br>(which is what most people run) is supported. But it is somewhat <br>of a hack since PAE needs to be turned on even with small amounts <br>(less than 4GB) of memory and it does come at a certain performance <br>cost. <br> <br>PAE needs to be turned on because only then there is extra room in <br>the processors page tables (just 1 bit per page) to mark memory <br>non-executable. <br> <br> -Hans <br> http://lwn.net/Articles/87860/rss 2004-06-03T05:02:01+00:00 rfunk &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;i&gt;a longstanding x86 security weakness will be no <br>more.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; <br> <br>Well, at least for those running x86-64 machines. The masses of us still <br>running plain old 32-bit x86 machines get no joy.