Re: [BUG FIX] [PATCH] fork_init() max_low_pfn fixes potential OOM bug on big highmem machine

From: Russell King
Date: Tue Jun 29 2004 - 05:59:34 EST


On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 06:48:14PM +0800, Coywolf Qi Hunt wrote:
> Russell King wrote:
> Actually there's physical DRAM offset: PHY_OFFSET, defined on ARM only.
> max_low_pfn happens to be the same as `num_lowpages'.
> These assignments seems illogical in naming. But just happen to let this
> patch work. Other platforms may still break.

That may be a bug actually. Looking at ll_rw_blk.c:

unsigned long bounce_pfn = dma_addr >> PAGE_SHIFT;
if (bounce_pfn < blk_max_low_pfn) {

blk_max_low_pfn = max_low_pfn;

dma_addr are physical addresses, so bounce_pfn is referenced to a PFN0
equal to physical address 0. This implies that blk_max_low_pfn is
likewise, as is max_low_pfn.

> [coywolf@everest ~/linux-2.6.7/arch]$ grep max_low_pfn arm* -rn
> arm/mm/init.c:235: max_low_pfn = memend_pfn - O_PFN_DOWN(PHYS_OFFSET);

However, here, max_low_pfn of zero corresponds with the PFN of
PHYS_OFFSET. We have something with two different origins being
compared, which is nonsense. So something is wrong somewhere,
and my money is on max_low_pfn.

--
Russell King
Linux kernel 2.6 ARM Linux - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
maintainer of: 2.6 PCMCIA - http://pcmcia.arm.linux.org.uk/
2.6 Serial core
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