Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 02/22] virtio: run drivers in 32bit mode

[Gerd Hoffmann]

  Hi,

> > Not really any more.  Switching from 32bit mode back to
> > whatever-was-active-before used to be problematic before we had smm mode
> > support.  In theory.  Because you can't save/restore the complete x86
> > processor state.  In practice we had surprisingly few problems,
> > appearently linux boot loaders simply don't play dirty tricks.
> > 

> Interesting. Might not be true for non-linux loaders :)

No problems with modern windows too.
DOS with emm386 being active could be more challenging.

Didn't dig that deep though, and as the ide driver runs
in 16bit mode still there is an easy way around any
isses should they pop up.

> Anyway we support SSM now so all should be well, right?

Yes, with smm this issue is gone.

cheers,
  Gerd