Re: [PATCH 2/2] x86 e820: Introduce memmap=resetusablemap for kdump usage

Yinghai Lu
2013-01-29T02:19:09Z

On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 6:11 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:
> On 01/28/2013 06:10 PM, Yinghai Lu wrote:
>>
>>
>> kexec-tools will change that to E820_KDUMP_RESERVED (or other good name).
>>
>> We only need to update kernel to get old max_pfn by
>> checking E820_KDUMP_RESERVED.
>>
>
> OK, I have asked this before, but I still have not gotten any acceptable
> answer:
>
> Why do we still have max_*_pfn at all? Shouldn't it all be based on
> memblocks by now?

saved_max_pfn is used for kdump:
drivers/char/mem.c::read_oldmem will stop there.
...
while (count) {
pfn = *ppos / PAGE_SIZE;
if (pfn > saved_max_pfn)
return read;
...