The commit 99c13b8c8896d7bcb92753bf
("x86/mm/pat: Don't report PAT on CPUs that don't support it")
incorrectly failed to account for the case in init_cache_modes() when
CPUs do support PAT and falsely reported PAT to be disabled when in
fact PAT is enabled. In some environments, notably in Xen PV domains,
MTRR is disabled but PAT is still enabled, and that is the case
that the aforementioned commit failed to account for.
As an unfortunate consequnce, the pat_enabled() function currently does
not correctly report that PAT is enabled in such environments. The fix
is implemented in init_cache_modes() by setting pat_bp_enabled to true
in init_cache_modes() for the case that commit 99c13b8c8896d7bcb92753bf
("x86/mm/pat: Don't report PAT on CPUs that don't support it") failed
to account for.
This approach arranges for pat_enabled() to return true in the Xen PV
environment without undermining the rest of PAT MSR management logic
that considers PAT to be disabled: Specifically, no writes to the PAT
MSR should occur.
This patch fixes a regression that some users are experiencing with
Linux as a Xen Dom0 driving particular Intel graphics devices by
correctly reporting to the Intel i915 driver that PAT is enabled where
previously it was falsely reporting that PAT is disabled. Some users
are experiencing system hangs in Xen PV Dom0 and all users on Xen PV
Dom0 are experiencing reduced graphics performance because the keying of
the use of WC mappings to pat_enabled() (see arch_can_pci_mmap_wc())
means that in particular graphics frame buffer accesses are quite a bit
less performant than possible without this patch.
Also, with the current code, in the Xen PV environment, PAT will not be
disabled if the administrator sets the "nopat" boot option. Introduce
a new boolean variable, pat_force_disable, to forcibly disable PAT
when the administrator sets the "nopat" option to override the default
behavior of using the PAT configuration that Xen has provided.
For the new boolean to live in .init.data, init_cache_modes() also needs
moving to .init.text (where it could/should have lived already before).
Fixes: 99c13b8c8896d7bcb92753bf ("x86/mm/pat: Don't report PAT on CPUs that don't support it")
Co-developed-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Chuck Zmudzinski <brchuckz@xxxxxxx>
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