Re: [Xen-devel] Re: [PATCH] Two patches fixing regressionintroduced by 'x86-64, mm: Put early page table high'

From: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk
Date: Mon May 02 2011 - 14:08:19 EST


On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 10:31:21AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 05/02/2011 10:22 AM, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> >
> > But we haven't come up with an acceptable general solution yet, so this
> > patchset provides a workaround for the problem. Peter, Yinghai - what would be
> > the best forum/email/conference to hammer out a general solution for this?
> >
> > Currently, there are couple of ways of fixing this:
> > - use pvops hooks: http://marc.info/?i=1302607192-21355-2-git-send-email-stefano.stabellini@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > - have a workaround in Xen MMU's early bootup code (which is what these
> > two patches to this email have).
> > - or remove the patch introducing the regression altogether.
> >
> > Foremost important is to fix the regression, and attached patches
> > achieve that. I want to remove this workaround patch when we
> > hammer out more appropriate semantics for the page table creation - but
> > that will take some time and the runway to do that in 2.6.39 is gone.
> >
>
> My inclination would be to apply your workaround -- are there any
> adverse effects to doing that?

There is a bootup slowdown (not noticeable). That is because we call the
'memblock_find_range' function on every PTE table creation (only during
bootup of course).

Testing wise, on the machines on which the regression occurred, with these two
patches the regression disappears - so that is a good sign. I am testing
it on some more today to assure myself I am not missing anything.

>
> -hpa
>
> [Sorry if I have missed any emails recently... apparently my email was
> significantly on the fritz over the last few days.]

Yikes - I hate when that happens. I was wondering why you went so silent
on some of the emails.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/