Snow Leopard has a 32-bit kernel! as the default

[MacHappytjg]

Simply speaking, This guy has an old MacBook which has a 32-bit CPU and he is not happy with it.

Isn't Snowleopard going to work with the core duo macs, ive tried a few versions of the snow leopard build and got it to work great with a cd macbook, and apparently snow leopard is going to work with "all" intel macs from my understanding.

 

[bozz2006]

it'll work with all intel macs. it will run 64 bit applications on macs with 64 bit processors, which does not include core duo. it will run 64 bit kernel on all 64 macs with 64 bit processors and those with 64 bit firmware and kexts, which does not include the 2006 mac pro, or any mac with intel graphics, such as all the macbooks previous to the unibody models.

on core duo macbooks, snow leopard will run, but only in 32 bit.

 

[MacHappytjg]

it'll work with all intel macs. it will run 64 bit applications on macs with 64 bit processors, which does not include core duo. it will run 64 bit kernel on all 64 macs with 64 bit processors and those with 64 bit firmware and kexts, which does not include the 2006 mac pro, or any mac with intel graphics, such as all the macbooks previous to the unibody models.

on core duo macbooks, snow leopard will run, but only in 32 bit.

Yeah thats what i meant, i dont even have a mac anymoar so im not all up tight about snow leopard and even if i did have a 32bit mac i could careless about the 64bit programs. I like tiger xD

 

[magicrabbit]

Funny thing about you all guys saying that 64 bit works as long as you have a new mac, I have a brand new macbook pro. 2 weeks old, 2.66ghz, both integrated and non-integrated graphics cards, and still it doesn't run in a 64 bit kernel.

You can run 64 bit apps in a 32 bit kernel, that's what the original leopard did. Go into system profiler, click on software, unless you got some super amazing machine that apple released 10 minutes ago, you're going to see the same thing I see.

64-bit Kernel and Extensions: No

And I figured this all out with just 5 minutes of googling.

You can go into 64 bit by holding 6 and 4 like a lot of people have been saying, but it doesn't happen by default, which is what the original poster was saying.

EDIT: Sorry if this was slightly misleading, I was referring to the macbook family, not xserves and mac pro's, the newer versions of the latter two will boot in 64 by default.

 

[Vonswanko]

unless you got some super amazing machine that apple released 10 minutes ago, you're going to see the same thing I see.

64-bit Kernel and Extensions: No

My uMB from October says 64-bit Kernel and Extensions: YES
FWIW I think its random which ones are booting into 64 and which ones aren't, the nature of the beta beast.

 

[5DollaFootlong]

So even Core 2 Dou macbooks, Mac Minis, etc with Intel GMA will use 32-bit kernel.

If you think otherwise you are full of crap.

Even some of the MacPros from last year still run 32-bit EFI and will use a 32-bit kernel.

Your Mac can easily use all of that additional RAM, but any single process can only use 4 GB of RAM

Here are more benefits to having the kernel 64-bit

one aspect of moving to a full 64-bit OS is an increase in system security. How does a 64-bit OS affect security? It should eliminate one of the most common forms of security threats, or at least nullify it until malware developers come up with something new. Snow Leopard, and any application that runs under Snow Leopard, will set all writeable memory as non-executable.

With ASLR, the location of an application’s memory is randomly selected from available memory each time the application is run. But since the available memory space in Leopard was limited to 4 GB, Apple ended up having to retain certain dynamic loaders that were responsible for loading and unloading frameworks, and the libraries applications need, in the same memory space all the time, which made their location easy to find and attack. With the larger 64-bit memory space available, Apple will use a better ASLR that will include randomized locations for those dynamic loaders as well.

show me an article smart***.

 

[felt.]

my firewire audio interface stops being recognized when booting into 64bit mode, should I be worried

 

[joviko]

And then my brain finally clicked into gear...

So, fine, my faithful Mini Core Solo (yes, solo, and yes I know it is a laptop-in-a-can 32-bit processor) won't be able to run the 64-bit kernel. Whoopee. Like I really care. As long as it doesn't crash and doesn't slow down, good enough for me.

But then out of curiosity I fired up System Profiler and checked some of the software to see what's what.

Uh-oh.

Quicken 2006 ... PowerPC
AppleWorks 6 ... PowerPC

Actually, I have a TON of apps that are PowerPC. Now, most of them I haven't used in forever and don't really care if they stop working. But the two above are ones I use all the time, and I intentionally haven't upgraded them because I don't like the new "improved" versions.

Plus there's this:

TurboTax 2005 ... PowerPC

So if I ever need to look at my old tax info (cross fingers, the nice IRS folks never nicely ask me to), no go if I upgrade to SL.

Sigh. I'll have to think about that a little.

Could someone who's upgraded an older Mac to an SL beta and who has "legacy" PowerPC apps on the same machine fire one of them up and see what happens?

I'm wondering: Does SL -remove- the PowerPC support on older Macs that have it, or does it just no longer install it? Will my beloved Quicken 2006 stop working if I upgrade to SL?

TIA!

 

[NintendoFan]

So, fine, my faithful Mini Core Solo (yes, solo) won't be able to run the 64-bit kernel. Whoopee. Like I really care. As long as it doesn't crash and doesn't slow down, good enough for me.

But then out of curiosity I fired up System Profiler and checked some of the software to see what's what.

Uh-oh.

Quicken 2006 ... PowerPC
AppleWorks 6 ... PowerPC

Actually, I have a TON of apps that are PowerPC. Now, most of them I haven't used in forever and don't really care if they stop working. But the two above are ones I use all the time, and I intentionally haven't upgraded them because I don't like the new "improved" versions.

Plus there's this:

TurboTax 2005 ... PowerPC

So if I ever need to look at my old tax info (cross fingers, the nice IRS folks never nicely ask me to), no go if I upgrade to SL.

Sigh. I'll have to think about that a little.

Could someone who's upgraded an older Mac to an SL beta and who has "legacy" PowerPC apps on the same machine fire one of them up and see what happens?

I'm wondering: Does SL -remove- the PowerPC support on older Macs that have it, or does it just no longer install it? Will my beloved Quicken 2006 stop working if I upgrade to SL?

TIA!

Well the Core Duos and Solos could never run a 64-bit kernel, as they are 32-bit Processors.

 

[Sneakz]

So, fine, my faithful Mini Core Solo (yes, solo, and yes I know it is a laptop-in-a-can 32-bit processor) won't be able to run the 64-bit kernel. Whoopee. Like I really care. As long as it doesn't crash and doesn't slow down, good enough for me.

But then out of curiosity I fired up System Profiler and checked some of the software to see what's what.

Uh-oh.

Quicken 2006 ... PowerPC
AppleWorks 6 ... PowerPC

Actually, I have a TON of apps that are PowerPC. Now, most of them I haven't used in forever and don't really care if they stop working. But the two above are ones I use all the time, and I intentionally haven't upgraded them because I don't like the new "improved" versions.

Plus there's this:

TurboTax 2005 ... PowerPC

So if I ever need to look at my old tax info (cross fingers, the nice IRS folks never nicely ask me to), no go if I upgrade to SL.

Sigh. I'll have to think about that a little.

Could someone who's upgraded an older Mac to an SL beta and who has "legacy" PowerPC apps on the same machine fire one of them up and see what happens?

I'm wondering: Does SL -remove- the PowerPC support on older Macs that have it, or does it just no longer install it? Will my beloved Quicken 2006 stop working if I upgrade to SL?

TIA!

Just install Rosetta, and all your PPC apps should continue to work.

 

[nick9191]

So, fine, my faithful Mini Core Solo (yes, solo, and yes I know it is a laptop-in-a-can 32-bit processor) won't be able to run the 64-bit kernel. Whoopee. Like I really care. As long as it doesn't crash and doesn't slow down, good enough for me.

But then out of curiosity I fired up System Profiler and checked some of the software to see what's what.

Uh-oh.

Quicken 2006 ... PowerPC
AppleWorks 6 ... PowerPC

Actually, I have a TON of apps that are PowerPC. Now, most of them I haven't used in forever and don't really care if they stop working. But the two above are ones I use all the time, and I intentionally haven't upgraded them because I don't like the new "improved" versions.

Plus there's this:

TurboTax 2005 ... PowerPC

So if I ever need to look at my old tax info (cross fingers, the nice IRS folks never nicely ask me to), no go if I upgrade to SL.

Sigh. I'll have to think about that a little.

Could someone who's upgraded an older Mac to an SL beta and who has "legacy" PowerPC apps on the same machine fire one of them up and see what happens?

I'm wondering: Does SL -remove- the PowerPC support on older Macs that have it, or does it just no longer install it? Will my beloved Quicken 2006 stop working if I upgrade to SL?

TIA!

You can still run PPC apps on Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard will not run on PPC Macs, that is all.

 

[damnyooneek]

all systems processes says 64-bit next to it when i check on activity monitor. i didnt have to do anything after i upgraded to 10a432

 

[joviko]

Just install Rosetta, and all your PPC apps should continue to work.

Hmmm. Yeah, I guess that's what I'm really asking: Will SL:
- Uninstall Rosetta on a Mac that already has it or
- Disable Rosetta or
- Leave Rosetta be AND play nice with it?

It strikes me that there are probably a lot of users out there who will have a situation similar to mine: planning on upgrading to SL, but, whoa, if my favorite legacy app suddenly stops working, that's a Bad Thing. And a very important thing to know for sure before firing up the SL installer.

And, since it always seems to be this way, many users won't know or care about 64-bit or Rosetta, they'll just know that SL broke their favorite app. And those users who are your friends and relatives and who upgraded to SL because YOU told them that they should are pissed at YOU because YOU broke their Mac.

I suppose we won't really know until the final version of SL ships.

But my guess is that a beta SL copy should give a pretty strong indication of how the release version will work.

 

[pilotError]

my firewire audio interface stops being recognized when booting into 64bit mode, should I be worried

Well, this is one of the issues with 64 bit, it won't load the 32 bit drivers (kext's).

You need to wait until official release and hope your hardware vendor releases a 64 bit driver for your hardware.

 

[joviko]

Legacy PPC apps on SL

Apologies for plowing on with a topic that probably should be pushed into a separate thread. It's not really a 32-/64-bit issue. But it is pretty important and is somewhat related.

Clearly I'm not the only one wondering, and it seems like there are some people who firmly believe that SL will include Rosetta or at least won't break it.

For example:

MacFixIt SL/Rosetta thread

But after a little Googling, I have yet to find a post that says something explicit like "Well, I have an SL beta installed on [older Mac model] and [popular PPC app] works just fine, thank you very much!"

Anyone with an older Intel Mac running Snow Leopard want to fire up a PPC app and see what happens? Much appreciated!!!

 

[sk1nhd33t]

Funny thing about you all guys saying that 64 bit works as long as you have a new mac, I have a brand new macbook pro. 2 weeks old, 2.66ghz, both integrated and non-integrated graphics cards, and still it doesn't run in a 64 bit kernel.

You can run 64 bit apps in a 32 bit kernel, that's what the original leopard did. Go into system profiler, click on software, unless you got some super amazing machine that apple released 10 minutes ago, you're going to see the same thing I see.

64-bit Kernel and Extensions: No

And I figured this all out with just 5 minutes of googling.

You can go into 64 bit by holding 6 and 4 like a lot of people have been saying, but it doesn't happen by default, which is what the original poster was saying.

same as my my 2.4 unibody MBP. If anyone wanna try, add "arch=x86_64" on your boot.plist then reboot. Works on my end, now it says 64-bit Kernel and Extensions: YES

 

[ayeying]

The MacBook Air's still don't have that 64-bit ability even with '6' + '4' or the boot.plist change. Tested on 10A380, 10A402a, 10A411, 10A421 and 10A432.

 

[throttlemeister]

all systems processes says 64-bit next to it when i check on activity monitor. i didnt have to do anything after i upgraded to 10a432

Do a uname -a in terminal. Does it say x86_64? If not, you are running 32b kernel, which IS the default for anything except the xserve models.

 

[throttlemeister]

You can still run PPC apps on Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard will not run on PPC Macs, that is all.

Funny thing is, if you do a file on your kernel, you will see the SL _kernel_ still has ppc in the binary. All other system binaries are intel only, but the kernel is not. So theoretically, one could make SL work on PPC.

file mach_kernel 
mach_kernel: Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures
mach_kernel (for architecture x86_64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
mach_kernel (for architecture i386):	Mach-O executable i386
mach_kernel (for architecture ppc):	Mach-O executable ppc

 

[magicrabbit]

show me an article smart***.

http://www.start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2914&Itemid=114

"The early 2008 models of the Mac Pro, 15" and 17" MacBook Pro and Xserve can be used for 64-bit kernel development. Audio and AirPort are now enabled on these on these testing configurations. In SnowLeopard, the 64-bit kernel is is used by default on the Xserve and the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro systems can be booted into the 64-bit kernel in one of two ways:

1.
Temporarily boot into the 64-bit kernel by holding down "6" and "4" while powering on the machine
2.
Run `sudo nvram boot-args="arch=x86_64" ` to set the 64-bit kernel as your default kernel, and append any other debugging flags you may need, such as "debug=0x144". To revert back to the 32-bit kernel as the default, you can run `sudo nvram -d boot-args`."

 

[magicrabbit]

The difference in performance between 32 and 64 bit is astounding. I did some xbench tests and here's what i got

Integrated Graphics, 32 Bit: 116.38

Performance Graphics, 32 Bit: 127.32

Integrated Graphics, 64 Bit: 130.78

Performance Graphics, 64 Bit: 131.98

if you guys are interested I'm happy to upload the full detailed results for all 4 tests

 

[mmoran27]

More lameness

All system applications except DVD Player, Front Row, Grapher, and iTunes have been rewritten in 64-bit.

That is from the Snow Leopard page. It also says nothing not one sentence about the kernel being 64-bit.

So that is how they will ship it. 32-bit kernel just like I said.

I have also read many posts of people with new MBPs that install the 32-bit kernel as default.

Just wait and see. Apple is trying to pull the wool over everyones eyes. It advertises everything 64-bit apps, not kernel.
The only place they mention a full 64-bit OS with kernel is on their Snow Leopard server page.

Mac OS X Server is a full 64-bit operating system designed to maximize the computing potential of today’s Xserve and Mac Pro systems.
It never says that for Snow Leopard on any other systems. Just like I said. It will ship 32-bit on everything except xserves and mac pro.

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/t...yfour-bit.html

 

[OSXbugs]

My uMB from October says 64-bit Kernel and Extensions: YES
FWIW I think its random which ones are booting into 64 and which ones aren't, the nature of the beta beast.

It is not random. Only XServes are defaultly booting into K64

my firewire audio interface stops being recognized when booting into 64bit mode, should I be worried

Exactly the reason that Apple has not switched the K64 booting on by default. Don't be worried, just boot into 32 bit kernel, and you'll still be using 64 bit apps.

all systems processes says 64-bit next to it when i check on activity monitor. i didnt have to do anything after i upgraded to 10a432

System processes will run at 64 Bit by default, but what you want to look for is kernel_task. That will not be 64 bit (by default).

Will SL:
- Uninstall Rosetta on a Mac that already has it or
- Disable Rosetta or
- Leave Rosetta be AND play nice with it?

No.
No.
Yes.

It strikes me that there are probably a lot of users out there who will have a situation similar to mine: planning on upgrading to SL, but, whoa, if my favorite legacy app suddenly stops working, that's a Bad Thing.

They will continue to work.

Anyone with an older Intel Mac running Snow Leopard want to fire up a PPC app and see what happens? Much appreciated!!!

Rosetta exists, it is an optional install, and even if you don't have your disc around and didn't install it as an option, the moment you first try to run a Rosetta app, OS X downloads it from Apple. Your app then runs.

All system applications except DVD Player, Front Row, Grapher, and iTunes have been rewritten in 64-bit.

I know at least two of those apps are written in Carbon, which does not do 64bit.

So that is how they will ship it. 32-bit kernel just like I said.

I have also read many posts of people with new MBPs that install the 32-bit kernel as default.

Just wait and see. Apple is trying to pull the wool over everyones eyes. It advertises everything 64-bit apps, not kernel.

Why would Apple want to default K64, when the vast majority of its users will not see any effects of it? They would be asking for many more problems if they did this. Many issues would come up for the average citizen, but do you think it would make sense for Apple these users: "But we enabled K64 for you by default! Wasn't that nice of us?"

The only machine defaultly booting to K64 is XServe. Any others that are capable, the user will know about it, and know that they want to enable it. End of story.

 

[ayeying]

Why would Apple want to default K64, when the vast majority of its users will not see any effects of it? They would be asking for many more problems if they did this. Many issues would come up for the average citizen, but do you think it would make sense for Apple these users: "But we enabled K64 for you by default! Wasn't that nice of us?"

The only machine defaultly booting to K64 is XServe. Any others that are capable, the user will know about it, and know that they want to enable it. End of story.

Here's the thing... not all machines are capable of enabling the 64-bit kernel. For example, the MacBook Air's can't use it, even with the 10A432 (GM) build.

 

[OSXbugs]

Here's the thing... not all machines are capable of enabling the 64-bit kernel. For example, the MacBook Air's can't use it, even with the 10A432 (GM) build.

Right... I seem to be missing your point?