Re: [PATCH 1/2] kexec: Add quick kexec support for kernel

[Dave Young]

Hi,

On 08/14/20 at 04:21pm, Sang Yan wrote:
> 
> 
> On 08/14/20 14:58, Dave Young wrote:
> > On 08/14/20 at 01:52am, Sang Yan wrote:
> >> In normal kexec, relocating kernel may cost 5 ~ 10 seconds, to
> >> copy all segments from vmalloced memory to kernel boot memory,
> >> because of disabled mmu.
> > 
> > It is not the case on all archs, I assume your case is arm64, please
> > describe it in patch log :)
> > 
> Yes, it's particularly obvious on arm64. I will add it to the patch log,
> and test how long it takes on x86 and other arch.
> 
> > About the arm64 problem, I know Pavel Tatashin is working on a patchset
> > to improve the performance with enabling mmu.
> > 
> > I added Pavel in cc, can you try his patches?
> > 
> Thanks for your tips, I will try these patches. @Pavel.
> Disable mmu after finishing copying pages?
> >>
> >> We introduce quick kexec to save time of copying memory as above,
> >> just like kdump(kexec on crash), by using reserved memory
> >> "Quick Kexec".
> > 
> > This approach may have gain, but it also introduce extra requirements to
> > pre-reserve a memory region.  I wonder how Eric thinks about the idea.
> > 
> > Anyway the "quick" name sounds not very good, I would suggest do not
> > introduce a new param, and the code can check if pre-reserved region
> > exist then use it, if not then fallback to old way.
> > 
> aha. I agree with it, but I thought it may change the old behaviors of
> kexec_load.
> 
> I will update a new patch without introducing new flags and new params.

Frankly I'm still not sure it is worth to introduce a new interface if the
improvement can be done in arch code like Pavel is doing.  Can you try
that first?

Thanks
Dave