Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754787Ab0GMJan (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:30:43 -0400 Received: from f0.cmpxchg.org ([85.214.51.133]:42173 "EHLO cmpxchg.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752600Ab0GMJam (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:30:42 -0400 Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:30:06 +0200 From: Johannes Weiner To: Minchan Kim Cc: linux@arm.linux.org.uk, Yinghai Lu , "H. Peter Anvin" , Andrew Morton , Shaohua Li , Yakui Zhao , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, kgene.kim@samsung.com, Mel Gorman , KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki Subject: Re: [RFC] Tight check of pfn_valid on sparsemem Message-ID: <20100713093006.GB14504@cmpxchg.org> References: <20100712155348.GA2815@barrios-desktop> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20100712155348.GA2815@barrios-desktop> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1943 Lines: 47 On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:53:48AM +0900, Minchan Kim wrote: > Kukjin, Could you test below patch? > I don't have any sparsemem system. Sorry. > > -- CUT DOWN HERE -- > > Kukjin reported oops happen while he change min_free_kbytes > http://www.spinics.net/lists/arm-kernel/msg92894.html > It happen by memory map on sparsemem. > > The system has a memory map following as. > section 0 section 1 section 2 > 0x20000000-0x25000000, 0x40000000-0x50000000, 0x50000000-0x58000000 > SECTION_SIZE_BITS 28(256M) > > It means section 0 is an incompletely filled section. > Nontheless, current pfn_valid of sparsemem checks pfn loosely. > > It checks only mem_section's validation. > So in above case, pfn on 0x25000000 can pass pfn_valid's validation check. > It's not what we want. > > The Following patch adds check valid pfn range check on pfn_valid of sparsemem. Look at the declaration of struct mem_section for a second. It is meant to partition address space uniformly into backed and unbacked areas. It comes with implicit size and offset information by means of SECTION_SIZE_BITS and the section's index in the section array. Now you are not okay with the _granularity_ but propose to change _the model_ by introducing a subsection within each section and at the same time make the concept of a section completely meaningless: its size becomes arbitrary and its associated mem_map and flags will apply to the subsection only. My question is: if the sections are not fine-grained enough, why not just make them? The biggest possible section size to describe the memory population on this machine accurately is 16M. Why not set SECTION_SIZE_BITS to 24? -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/