Re: [PATCH v3 02/14] arm64: drop ranges in definition of ARCH_FORCE_MAX_ORDER

[Justin Forbes]

On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 1:09 AM Mike Rapoport <rppt@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> From: "Mike Rapoport (IBM)" <rppt@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> It is not a good idea to change fundamental parameters of core memory
> management. Having predefined ranges suggests that the values within
> those ranges are sensible, but one has to *really* understand
> implications of changing MAX_ORDER before actually amending it and
> ranges don't help here.
>
> Drop ranges in definition of ARCH_FORCE_MAX_ORDER and make its prompt
> visible only if EXPERT=y

I do not like suddenly hiding this behind EXPERT for a couple of
reasons.  Most importantly, it will silently change the config for
users building with an old kernel config.  If a user has for instance
"13" set and building with 4K pages, as is the current configuration
for Fedora and RHEL aarch64 builds, an oldconfig build will now set it
to 10 with no indication that it is doing so.  And while I think that
10 is a fine default for many aarch64 users, there are valid reasons
for choosing other values. Putting this behind expert makes it much
less obvious that this is an option.

Justin

> Acked-by: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Reviewed-by: Zi Yan <ziy@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (IBM) <rppt@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  arch/arm64/Kconfig | 4 +---
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 3 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/arch/arm64/Kconfig b/arch/arm64/Kconfig
> index e60baf7859d1..7324032af859 100644
> --- a/arch/arm64/Kconfig
> +++ b/arch/arm64/Kconfig
> @@ -1487,11 +1487,9 @@ config XEN
>  # 16K |       27          |      14      |       13        |         11         |
>  # 64K |       29          |      16      |       13        |         13         |
>  config ARCH_FORCE_MAX_ORDER
> -       int "Maximum zone order" if ARM64_4K_PAGES || ARM64_16K_PAGES
> +       int "Maximum zone order" if EXPERT && (ARM64_4K_PAGES || ARM64_16K_PAGES)
>         default "13" if ARM64_64K_PAGES
> -       range 11 13 if ARM64_16K_PAGES
>         default "11" if ARM64_16K_PAGES
> -       range 10 15 if ARM64_4K_PAGES
>         default "10"
>         help
>           The kernel memory allocator divides physically contiguous memory
> --
> 2.35.1
>
>