32-bit kernels with PAE by default

[euspectre]

Starting from kernel 4.1.30, which our QA team is checking at the moment, support for PAE (Physical Address Extension) is enabled by default on 32-bit systems.

As you probably know, PAE is supported by the CPUs since Pentium Pro and has at least two benefits:
* ability to use more than 4 Gb of RAM on 32-bit systems;
* a bit stronger protection from faulty and malicious applications as well as from some kernel exploits: it is now possible to forbid code execution in the particular memory regions.

Until recently, there were 4 official kernel flavours for 32-bit systems in ROSA R8:
1) nrj-desktop
2) nrj-laptop
3) nrj-desktop-pae
4) nrj-laptop-pae

The first two did not have PAE enabled.

What will change now?

* Only nrj-desktop and nrj-laptop flavours will remain and they will have PAE enabled now.
* The packages with non-PAE kernels will no longer be built and stored in the official repositories for ROSA R8.

If someone really needs a non-PAE kernel, it may be possible to prepare such packages separately and keep in a different repository.

Are any actions required from ROSA users?

Most likely, no. The users do not need to do anything special, except in some particular cases, see below. The transition to PAE kernels will be done automatically when you install software updates as usual.

Note that if you have kernel-nrj-desktop-pae-4.1-latest and kernel-nrj-desktop-pae-4.1-devel-latest installed, they will be updated to kernel-nrj-desktop-4.1-latest and kernel-nrj-desktop-4.1-devel-latest. Same for their nrj-laptop-pae and nrj-laptop counterparts.

Important
If you have ROSA R8 installed in a virtual machine, e.g., a VirtualBox VM, please check if PAE is enabled in the settings of this virtual machine. It is recommended to enable it, otherwise the new kernel versions will not work there.