Re: [PATCH] x86/mm/init: respect memblock reserved regions when destroying mappings

[Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>]

On 02/08/2011 06:55 AM, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
>>>> could be used to skip clear highmap for xen path?
>>> Seems pretty ad-hoc.
>>>
>> then what is size for mfn-list after _end...
> 8 bytes * nr_pages. For 4GB, 2048 pages. For 32GB, 8192 pages. For 128GB,
> 32768 pages, and so on.
>> could be copied or move to BRK.
> The _brk size is determined during build-time. We don't know what the
> memory size will be during bootup time and would have to select the
> highest values (128MB) which is quite a large amount to be reserved
> in _brk area.

If the brk is guaranteed to be the last thing in the kernel, we could
remove the static allocation of brk space, and just make it dynamic, and
then use the dynamic end-of-brk instead of _end.

That would require mapping the brk space at runtime, which would require
a (conservative) runtime estimate of how much space we would end up
needing, I guess by adding together the static allocations and then
adding any dynamic ones we need.

For Xen, specifically, we could just extend brk to include all the stuff
the domain builder sticks after the kernel, so it would both be brk
allocated and left in-situ.

But I'm not sure if this would work in the native case - would there be
a guarantee that there's enough space after the kernel to fit any brk usage?

    J