Re: [PATCH] x86: unify "numa=" command line option handling

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>]

* Jan Beulich <JBeulich@novell.com> wrote:

> >>> On 07.01.11 at 13:57, Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
> 
> > * Jan Beulich <JBeulich@novell.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> >>> On 07.01.11 at 10:58, David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> wrote:
> >> > On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >> > 
> >> >> However, the problem my patch addresses has been long standing
> >> >> (I noted it with our .32 based kernel, but according to my looking at
> >> >> the code it would go back to at least .27), so I'd like to ask for it to
> >> >> be merged independently (and I should probably have copied stable
> >> >> too), unless (quite unlikely) Tejun's merge is intended to also be
> >> >> applied to stable kernels.
> >> >> 
> >> > 
> >> > I don't think this should be targeted to -stable since it's not a bugfix; 
> >> > this is adding a feature that allows you to disable acpi parsing of the 
> >> > SRAT on i386.
> >> 
> >> How is this not a bug fix if it allows a system to boot that previously
> >> didn't?
> > 
> > btw., that's an absolutely key piece of information that REALLY should have 
> > been 
> > included in the changelog of the first patch. It is more important than all 
> > of the 
> > changelog.
> 
> Quoting that text: "In order to be able to suppress the use of SRAT
> tables that 32-bit Linux can't deal with (possibly leading to a non-
> bootable system, without disabling ACPI altogether), move the
> "numa=" option handling to common code."
> 
> To me it says just that. And of course, not every system with a
> not understood SRAT would be yielded non-bootable, hence the
> wording "possibly leading to ...".


Your -stable comment above made it appear to me as if you knew about a specific 
system that crashed this way? As long as it's only theoretical i'm not sure it 
warrants a -stable backport.

Thanks,

	Ingo