Unix and Linux Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [x86]

The processor architecture of most PCs and servers, including the 386/486/Pentium/… (IA-32) 32-bit family and the amd64 64-bit family. Most x86 processors are made by Intel or AMD.

x86 is a family of processor architectures. Almost all desktop, laptop and server computers have an x86 processor made by Intel or AMD as their CPU. Today, x86 comprises two major architectures:

  • IA-32, a 32-bit architecture introduced in the 80386 processor and found in all subsequent generations including all Pentium generations.
  • x86-64, also known as amd64, a 64-bit architecture found in most recent x86 processors, which retains IA-32 as a subset. (Not to be confused with IA-64, also called Itanium, a different 64-bit architecture from Intel used in a few high-end servers and high-performance computers.)

Further reading

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What do the flags in /proc/cpuinfo mean?

How can I tell whether my processor has a particular feature? (64-bit instruction set, hardware-assisted virtualization, cryptographic accelerators, etc.) I know that the file /proc/cpuinfo contains this information, in the flags line, but what do…
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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How to determine Linux kernel architecture?

uname -m gives i686 and uname -m gives i686 i386 output in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.4 (Tikanga) machine. I need to install Oracle Database 10g Release 2 on that machine. So, how can I decide whether kernel architecture is 32bit or…
user2914
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How to mitigate the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities on Linux systems?

Security researchers have published on the Project Zero a new vulnerability called Spectre and Meltdown allowing a program to steal information from a memory of others programs. It affects Intel, AMD and ARM architectures. This flaw can be exploited…
GAD3R
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dpkg: error: cannot remove architecture 'i386' currently in use by the database

I used this command to add i386 arch: sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 And then immediately after without installing any packages I tried to remove the i386 arch like so: sudo dpkg --remove-architecture i386 And i got the error: dpkg: error:…
olfek
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Porting Linux to another platform requirements

I know that Linux is available and has been ported for many different platforms such as for X86, ARM, PowerPC etc. However, in terms of porting, what is required exactly? My understanding is that Linux is software written in C. Therefore when…
Engineer999
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How to detect and mitigate the Intel escalation of privilege vulnerability on a Linux system (CVE-2017-5689)?

According to the Intel security-center post dated May 1, 2017, there is a critical vulnerability on Intel processors which could allow an attacker to gain privilege (escalation of privilege) using AMT, ISM and SBT. Because the AMT has direct access…
GAD3R
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Is it possible to compile a full Linux system with Intel's compiler instead of GCC?

Maybe there are some compatibility issues? I have the impression that for Intel-based systems, the Intel compiler would potentially do a better job than GCC. Perhaps there's already a distro that has attempted this? I would think this might be quite…
barrymac
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Using ABI_X86 in Gentoo

It's been months since I've updated my Gentoo system. And, as you can imagine, this means there's a lot of packages (and USE changes) I need to go over. My system is "amd64" (multilib), but I have a lot of manually keyworded packages from "~amd64".…
gen_Eric
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How do I know that my CPU supports 64bit operating systems under Linux?

How can I find out that my CPU supports 64bit operating systems under Linux, e.g.: Ubuntu, Fedora?
LanceBaynes
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32-bit, 64-bit CPU op-mode on Linux

I'm confused. Running Fedora Linux, lscpu yields: Architecture: i686 CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit ... But when I try to install a 64-bit program (Chrome) I get error like: Package /....x86_64.rpm has incompatible architecture…
Zak
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Difference between “machine hardware”, "processor type" and “hardware platform”

My Linux machine reports "uname -a" outputs as below: [root@tom i386]# uname -a Linux tom 2.6.9-89.ELsmp #1 SMP Mon Apr 20 10:34:33 EDT 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux [root@tom i386]# As per man page of uname, the entries "i686 i686 i386"…
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Load Linux bzImage in QEMU?

I compiled a Linux by doing make menuconfig then make and now I have compiled the most recent version of Linux. How can I load the kernel into QEMU?
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Overclocking tools in Linux

I am trying to overclock my machine. All the changes are made on the BIOS level, but then one needs to check all the temperatures, voltages, etc and test the stability of the overclock. Most tutorials (if not all) are written for Windows. What would…
Grzenio
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What does physical address 0 in x86 Linux contain?

I am not sure if this question should go here or in reverseengineering.stackexchange.com Quoting from wikipedia: In the 8086 processor, the interrupt table is called IVT (interrupt vector table). The IVT always resides at the same location in…
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Running X86 binaries on armv7

I am trying to run a SNBC USB printer on Raspberry Pi2. For that I need to copy the filter binary of the SNBC USB printer to /usr/lib/cups/filter. But the filter binary is compiled using a x86 processor (Manufacturer does not have interest to…
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