Re: [PATCH 05/10] arm64: Convert dts to use reserved-memory nodes

From: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
To: Grant Likely <grant.likely@linaro.org>
Cc: "Ian.Campbell@citrix.com" <Ian.Campbell@citrix.com>,
	Stefano Stabellini <stefano.stabellini@eu.citrix.com>,
	Geoff Levand <geoff@infradead.org>,
	Catalin Marinas <Catalin.Marinas@arm.com>,
	Will Deacon <Will.Deacon@arm.com>,
	Marc Zyngier <Marc.Zyngier@arm.com>,
	"christoffer.dall@linaro.org" <christoffer.dall@linaro.org>,
	"kexec@lists.infradead.org" <kexec@lists.infradead.org>,
	"linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org"
	<linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 05/10] arm64: Convert dts to use reserved-memory nodes
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 13:27:38 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20141024122738.GH24265@leverpostej> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CACxGe6szzOXHkK9ukpcSBZgeyy5AgX3+7PgQseBnB9XWYLj-PQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 11:59:38AM +0100, Grant Likely wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 12:10:58AM +0100, Geoff Levand wrote:
> >> Device tree regions described by /memreserve/ entries are not available in
> >> /proc/device-tree, and hence are not available to user space utilities that use
> >> /proc/device-tree.  In order for these regions to be available, convert any
> >> arm64 DTS files using /memreserve/ entries to use reserved-memory nodes.
> >
> > The limitation here is in the kernel (and a partially in userspace), so
> > modifying the dts files is a workaround rather than a fix.
> >
> > It's perfectly valid for people to remain using /memreserve/, so this
> > isn't sufficient. There are also existing DTBs using /memreserve/ which
> > we can't rely on being modified to use reserved-memory.
> >
> > I think we need to expose memreserves to userspace somehow, potentially
> > along with other DTB header fields. Grant, ideas?
> 
> Yes, I suggested the same thing to Geoff in a separate thread. Here's
> what I wrote:
> 
> >> Geoff Levand wrote:
> >>> I did some work on this and I think we just need to convert all the
> >>> arm64 dts from /memreserve/ to reserved-memory nodes and update the
> >>> arm64 booting.txt to specify using reserved-memory.  I'll prepare a
> >>> patch for it.
> >>
> >> I don't think that is going to be entirely sufficient. There will be
> >> platforms that don't get converted over, and this is a generic problem
> >> that covers all architectures using DT, not just aarch64. The solution
> >> probably needs to include exposing the /memreserve/ sections to
> >> userspace. I can see two ways to do this:
> >>
> >> 1) Create a new property in /sysfs with all the memreserve sctions
> >> 2) Live-modify the device tree to put the memreserve data into a node
> >> at boot time.
> >>
> >> Option 2 is probably the most generic solution, but it will require
> >> some care to make sure there aren't any overlaps if a reserved-memory
> >> node already exists.

I would prefer the former currently. While I currently believe that
modifying the tree is something we're going to have to do for stateful
properties, it's not someting I want to have to do unless absolutely
necessary.

> >>
> >> g.
> >
> > For reference, here is an old conversation about this exact thing.
> > Reading through it, the opinions I expressed then don't necessarily
> > match what I think now. I still don't think it is a good idea to
> > expose the physical address of the old .dtb blob, but I do agree that
> > the memreserve sections need to be exposed.
> >
> > https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2010-July/083993.html

Another option would be to expose the original DTB as a (read-only)
binary file somewhere. That might interact poorly with live tree
modification in future, however.

Mark.

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