David Johnston david@littlebald.com wrote:

Lim, also, make sure that the machine you're installing on is IA64 and not AMD (which is x86_64). One of our guys

made

that mistake last week, and wasted a lot of time trying to figure out why it was panicking.

Yep, I've now caught at least 2 people on other lists installing IA-64 on Dell's new EM64T systems. I guess the influx of Dell desktops with EM64T is causing a lot of confusion.

[ SIDE NOTE: I'm sure the fact that Debian doesn't list AMD64 as a port on its ports page (because it's not an official port release yet, just in test) is also causing people to assume IA64. ]

Here's the typical names of Linux ports as they match up to products:

Vendor Common Official ISA Products ------ ------ -------- -------- ----------------- AMD AMD64 x86-64 x86-64 Athlon/64/Opteron Intel EM64T IA-32e x86-64** Pentium-4/Xeon-MP Intel IA64 IA-64 IA-64 Itanium/2

AMD64 and EM64T are essentially the same, and support the AMD x86-64 (**NOTE: what Intel calls IA-32e, a slight subset of x86-64) instruction set architecture (ISA). In a nutshell, Linux/AMD64 aka Linux/x86-64 releases and packages (e.g., .x86_64.rpm) run on _commodity_ Athlon64/Opteron as well as newer Pentium 4/Xeon MP systems.

IA64 is _completely_different_ and only offers a subset of x86 compatibility in hardware (and Intel has even moved to using Digital's former FX!32 software because it's faster). IA-64 products are _Itanium_, and _never_ Pentium series.