on a ppc64 kernel with a ppc32 userland, running `ppc64 uname -m` fails ... samething happens on a ppc64 kernel with a ppc64 userland, but running `ppc32 ppc64 uname -m` ... however, utilizing the -B option and everything is peachy: ppc32 ppc64 -B uname -m older versions of linux64 (before the setarch package existed) would always force the "-B option", so i never noticed this before ... plus, the current error message doesnt give any indication why it failed so i propose the following ... if setarch is told to change to a 64bit personality (PER_LINUX) and it fails, and no additional options were given, then spit out a warning and retry with the 32bit limitation
Created attachment 124938 [details] setarch-1.8-switch-64bit-fallback.patch
Sorry, I don't like this idea. One should specify the -B personality explicitely and setarch shouldn't try to do it himself if it's not explicitely defined. The patch is indeed quite ugly and might be a source of bugs in the future. I mean infinite loop for instance.
it cant hit an infinite loop as the condition to hit the goto is changed before making the jump back at any rate, i should have labeled the bug as a [RFC] ... thanks for your comments
I think the default behaviour of ppc32 or ppc64 with the -B option would be better set, say, by making an alias in .bashrc than hardwiring it into setarch. Thanks for the RFE anyway.