Re: Re : sparsemem usage

[Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>]

moreau francis wrote:
> KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki wrote:
> > On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:40:52 +0200 (CEST)
> > moreau francis <francis_moreau2000@yahoo.fr> wrote: 
> > > > BTW, ioresouce information (see kernel/resouce.c)
> > > >
> > > > [kamezawa@aworks Development]$ cat /proc/iomem | grep RAM
> > > > 00000000-0009fbff : System RAM
> > > > 000a0000-000bffff : Video RAM area
> > > > 00100000-2dfeffff : System RAM
> > > >
> > > > is not enough ?
> > > well actually you show that to get a really simple information, ie does
> > > a page exist ?, we need to parse some kernel data structures like 
> > > ioresource (which is, IMHO, hackish) or duplicate in each architecture
> > > some data to keep track of existing pages.
> > becasue memory map from e820(x86) or efi(ia64) are registered to iomem_resource,
> > we should avoid duplicates that information. kdump and memory hotplug uses
> > this information. (memory hotplug updates this iomem_resource.)
> >
> > Implementing "page_is_exist" function based on ioresouce is one of generic
> > and rubust way to go, I think.
> > (if performance of list walking is problem, enhancing ioresouce code is
> >  better.)
> >  
>
> Why not implementing page_exist() by simply using mem_map[] ? When
> allocating mem_map[], we can just fill it with a special value. And
> then when registering memory area, we clear this special value with
> the "reserved" value. Hence for flatmem model, we can have:
>
> #define page_exist(pfn)        (mem_map[pfn] != SPECIAL_VALUE)
>
> and it should work for sparsemem too and other models that will use
> mem_map[].

The mem_map isn't a pointer, its a physical structure.  We have a 
special value to tell you if the page is usable within that, thats 
called PG_reserved.  If this page is reserved the kernel can't touch it, 
can't look at it.

> Another point, is page_exist() going to replace page_valid() ?
> I mean page_exist() is going to be something more accurate than
> page_valid(). All tests on page_valid() _only_ will be fine to test
> page_exist(). But all tests such:
>
>     if (page_valid(x) && page_is_ram(x))
>
> can be replaced by
>
>     if (page_exist(x))
>
> So, again, why not simply improving page_valid() definition rather
> than introduce a new service ?

Whilst I can understand that not knowing if a page is real or not is 
perhaps unappealing, I've yet to see any case where we need or care. 
Changing things to make things 'nicer' interlectually is sometimes 
worthwhile.  But what is the user here.

The only consumer you have shown is show_mem() which is a debug 
function, and that only dumps out the current memory counts.  Its not 
clear it cares to really know if a page is real or not.

-ap
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