On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 at 02:22:50PM -0800, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> since it came up during the review of the patch for virtual memory detection
> on 64 bit mips kernels, I looked further into making vmalloc_end
> a variable and TASK_SIZE dependent on the virtual memory size.
>
> That turned out to be relatively straightforward, and I have a working patch.
>
> The one question I still have is about FIXADDR_START. It is currently
> set to one of 0xff000000, 0xfffe0000, or (0xff000000 - 0x20000),
> depending on the target CPU.
>
> Quoting from one of the comments during the review,
> " ... ensure the value of vmalloc_end is <= FIXADDR_START".
>
> Obviously that is currently not the case. Is that a concern, or is it good as
> it is ?
Now with allocations potencially happening top-down this is potencially a
serious problem. Details would depend on details of platform, processor and
kernel configuration.
I said vmalloc_end is <= FIXADDR_START" but more accurately we simply
need to avoid a conflict between the different virtual address space users.
Some CPUs have fixed mappings in their hardware in the KSEG2/KSEG3 range;
those mappings can't be overriden by a TLB mapping. To deal with that
sort of architectural candy I think a call into the address space allocator
for kernel virtual memory is probably nicest thing but something simplier
than that would probable have to do for 2.6.34.
Ralf
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