On 25/4/23 15:38, Thomas Huth wrote:
Aside from not supporting KVM on 32-bit hosts, the qemu-system-x86_64
binary is a proper superset of the qemu-system-i386 binary. And with
the 32-bit x86 host support being deprecated now, it is possible to
deprecate the qemu-system-i386 binary now, too.
With regards to 32-bit KVM support in the x86 Linux kernel,
the developers confirmed that they do not need a recent
qemu-system-i386 binary here:
https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/y%2ffkts5ajfy0h...@google.com/
Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <th...@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berra...@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Wilfred Mallawa <wilfred.mall...@wdc.com>
Reviewed-by: Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <phi...@linaro.org>
---
docs/about/deprecated.rst | 16 ++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 16 insertions(+)
diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
index 1ca9dc33d6..c205816c7d 100644
--- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst
+++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
@@ -34,6 +34,22 @@ deprecating the build option and no longer defend it in CI.
The
``--enable-gcov`` build option remains for analysis test case
coverage.
+``qemu-system-i386`` binary (since 8.1)
+'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
+
+The ``qemu-system-i386`` binary was mainly useful for running with KVM
+on 32-bit x86 hosts, but most Linux distributions already removed their
+support for 32-bit x86 kernels, so hardly anybody still needs this. The
+``qemu-system-x86_64`` binary is a proper superset and can be used to
+run 32-bit guests by selecting a 32-bit CPU model, including KVM support
+on x86_64 hosts. Thus users are recommended to reconfigure their systems
+to use the ``qemu-system-x86_64`` binary instead. If a 32-bit CPU guest
+environment should be enforced, you can switch off the "long mode" CPU
+flag with ``-cpu max,lm=off``, or rename/symlink ``qemu-system-x86_64``
+to ``qemu-system-i386`` -- QEMU will then run with the 64-bit extensions
+disabled.
+
+
System emulator command line arguments
--------------------------------------
