Re: [PATCH v2 0/8] sparc: use asm-generic/dma-mapping-common.h and

[Joerg Roedel <joerg.roedel@amd.com>]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 01:12:24PM -0700, David Miller wrote:
> From: Joerg Roedel <joerg.roedel@amd.com>
> Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:23:55 +0200
> 
> > On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 10:40:16AM +0900, FUJITA Tomonori wrote:
> >> On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:56:21 -0400
> >> Robert Reif <reif@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> 
> >> > The bad address is within the kernel so it looks like
> >> > it's catching a real bug.
> >> > 
> >> > cat kallsyms | grep f0007000
> >> > f0007000 T trapbase_cpu3
> >> > 
> >> > WARNING: at lib/dma-debug.c:873 check_for_illegal_area+0xc8/0x100()
> >> > esp ffd7ba30: DMA-API: device driver maps memory from kernel text or 
> >> > rodata [addrð007000] [len@96]
> >> > Modules linked in: ext3 jbd sd_mod sun_esp esp_scsi scsi_transport_spi 
> >> 
> >> Ok, I looked at check_for_illegal_area() in dma-debug.
> >> 
> >> What check_for_illegal_area() does looks bogus to me with some of I/O
> >> remapping hardware.
> > 
> > Can you be more specific about this one? check_for_illegal_area() should
> > not depend on any hardware because all it does is checking the machine
> > addresses to be mapped.
> 
> The check can't work properly on sparc32.
> 
> Sparc32 always maps the kernel to a fixed physical location, and it
> therefore can execute in the identity mapping area of physical memory
> like where all the free pages and kmalloc areas live virtually.
> 
> So if we free up some pages within the kernel image (because the
> memory is unused, for exmple that's what's happening here with the
> extra trap table pages on Robert's machine) we have pages in the free
> page pool that are located right inside of the kernel text, data, etc.
> 
> We'll thus need a way to turn off these checks somehow.  You could
> also augment this check by seeing if there is a backing page, and if
> so, whether it is PageReserved or not.  That's just one idea.

Hmm these checks sound specific and hard to maintain. I think its best
to give architectures the option whether to enable this check or not.

	Joerg