Re: [RFC V2 0/1] mm/debug: Add tests for architecture exported page table helpers

[Anshuman Khandual]

On 08/09/2019 03:46 PM, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 01:03:17PM +0530, Anshuman Khandual wrote:
>> Should alloc_gigantic_page() be made available as an interface for general
>> use in the kernel. The test module here uses very similar implementation from
>> HugeTLB to allocate a PUD aligned memory block. Similar for mm_alloc() which
>> needs to be exported through a header.
> 
> Why are you allocating memory at all instead of just using some
> known-to-exist PFNs like I suggested?

We needed PFN to be PUD aligned for pfn_pud() and PMD aligned for mk_pmd().
Now walking the kernel page table for a known symbol like kernel_init()
as you had suggested earlier we might encounter page table page entries at PMD
and PUD which might not be PMD or PUD aligned respectively. It seemed to me
that alignment requirement is applicable only for mk_pmd() and pfn_pud()
which create large mappings at those levels but that requirement does not
exist for page table pages pointing to next level. Is not that correct ? Or
I am missing something here ?