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Date:   Thu, 12 Jul 2018 11:50:02 +0200
From:   Oscar Salvador <osalvador@techadventures.net>
To:     Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc:     Oscar Salvador <osalvador.vilardaga@gmail.com>,
        Pavel Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@oracle.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>, broonie@kernel.org,
        mhocko@suse.cz, Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>,
        linux-next@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
        Linux Memory Management List <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>, mm-commits@vger.kernel.org,
        linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org, bhe@redhat.com,
        aneesh.kumar@linux.ibm.com, khandual@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Subject: Re: Boot failures with "mm/sparse: Remove
 CONFIG_SPARSEMEM_ALLOC_MEM_MAP_TOGETHER" on powerpc (was Re: mmotm
 2018-07-10-16-50 uploaded)
Message-ID: <20180712095002.GA5342@techadventures.net>
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> > I just roughly check, but if I checked the right place,
> > vmemmap_populated() checks for the section to contain the flags we are
> > setting in sparse_init_one_section().
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > But with this patch, we populate first everything, and then we call
> > sparse_init_one_section() in sparse_init().
> > As I said I could be mistaken because I just checked the surface.
> 
> Yeah I think that's correct.
> 
> This might just be a bug in our code, let me look at it a bit.

I wonder if something like this could make the trick:

diff --git a/arch/powerpc/mm/init_64.c b/arch/powerpc/mm/init_64.c
index 51ce091914f9..e281651f50cd 100644
--- a/arch/powerpc/mm/init_64.c
+++ b/arch/powerpc/mm/init_64.c
@@ -177,6 +177,8 @@ static __meminit void vmemmap_list_populate(unsigned long phys,
        vmemmap_list = vmem_back;
 }
 
+static unsigned long last_addr_populated = 0;
+
 int __meminit vmemmap_populate(unsigned long start, unsigned long end, int node,
                struct vmem_altmap *altmap)
 {
@@ -191,7 +193,7 @@ int __meminit vmemmap_populate(unsigned long start, unsigned long end, int node,
                void *p;
                int rc;
 
-               if (vmemmap_populated(start, page_size))
+               if (start + page_size <= last_addr_populated)
                        continue;
 
                if (altmap)
@@ -212,6 +214,7 @@ int __meminit vmemmap_populate(unsigned long start, unsigned long end, int node,
                                __func__, rc);
                        return -EFAULT;
                }
+               last_addr_populated = start + page_size;
        }

I know it looks hacky, and chances are that are wrong, but could you give it a try?
I will try to grab a ppc server and try it out too.
 
Thanks
-- 
Oscar Salvador
SUSE L3