Re: [PATCH 00 of 10] x86: unify asm/pgtable.h

From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge
Date: Tue Jan 08 2008 - 20:38:34 EST


Andi Kleen wrote:
of the if()? If not, can't we just remove it and avoid this present problem?

That would just hide your problem.

The "problem" is a BUG() in pageattr_64.c:change_page_attr(), which to me looks spurious. It arises because __PAGE_KERNEL_* doesn't contain _PAGE_GLOBAL, but PAGE_KERNEL_* does. When ioremap() change_page_attr(), it does so in a way that guarentees that the test

if (pgprot_val(prot) != pgprot_val(ref_prot)) {

in __change_page_attr() always succeeds. When I folded _PAGE_GLOBAL into the __PAGE_KERNEL_* definitions, it mostly works except it causes this if() to fail, falling into the otherwise dead else clause and triggers a BUG().

I'm not really sure what the logic in here is supposed to be doing, but it seems to me that it isn't the difference between global and non-global mappings (I guess its really testing for cached vs uncached mappings).

Or to put it another way, what's the underlying rationale for making __PAGE_KERNEL_* not include the GLOBAL flag, but including it in the pgprot versions? It means that code like this in ioremap_64.c:

err = change_page_attr_addr(vaddr,npages,__pgprot(__PAGE_KERNEL|flags));

is subtly different from using PAGE_KERNEL | flags, because the latter also includes _PAGE_GLOBAL.

J
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