Question About Linux Memory Mapping

[marek.vasut@gmail.com (Marek Vasut)]

On Friday 18 February 2011 21:56:28 Drasko DRASKOVIC wrote:
> Hi all,
> in the article Booting ARM Linux :
> http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/SWLINUX/files/booting_article.html
> I can see that mem map is passed via ATAG_MEM. However, in the same
> article it is mentioned that this information can also be passed via
> kernel command line paramters,  mem=<size>[KM][,@<phys_offset>].
> 
> However, this does not seem to be true, as "mem" command line
> parameter seems to be formated like this : mem= n[KMG] (i.e. no
> offset), regarding to this reference :
> http://oreilly.com/linux/excerpts/9780596100797/kernel-boot-command-line-pa
> rameter-reference.html. Seems like memmap should be used instead.
> 
> I tried passing the parameters like memmap= n[KMG]@start[KMG] but that
> had no effect at all - still the same amount of System Ram was read
> from ATAGS and presented in the system via /proc/iomem.
> 
> What I needed it to reserve 1MB region for one FIFO at the end of RAM
> (or somewhere else)
> and protect it from the kernel. I tried passing memmap=
> n[KMG]$start[KMG], but that did not worn neither.

What are you exactly trying to achieve ? btw. if you really need to make a hole 
in RAM, you should reserve a bootmem node maybe?
> 
> So my questions are following :
> 1) Why commandlines are ignored and ATAGS are given priority ?
> 2) What is the most elegant way to protect one region in RAM :
>  a) By giving less memory with ATAGS_MEM and thus making protected
> region invisible to Linux, lying to it that RAM is smaller
>  b) By changing somehow linker script
>  c) By changing some configuration variables (which ?)
> 
> Thanks for the answers and best regards,
> Drasko
> 
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