Re: [RFC Patch 2/2] kexec: allow to shrink reserved memory

Amerigo Wang
2009-08-12T01:25:40Z

Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> Amerigo Wang <amwang@redhat.com> writes:
>
>
>> This patch implements shrinking the reserved memory for crash kernel,
>> if it is more than enough.
>>
>> For example, if you have already reserved 128M, now you just want 100M,
>> you can do:
>>
>> # echo $((100*1024*1024)) > /sys/kernel/kexec_crash_size
>>
>
> This patch looks like a reasonable start.
>
> However once a crash kernel image is loaded we have already told that
> image about the memory that is available and what you are doing here
> will go and stop on the memory that is reserved but not yet used,
> totally breaking the DMA protections. AKA we know the memory is safe
> from ongoing DMAs because it has lain fallow since boot up.
>
> The only safe thing to do is to reduce the memory size before (possibly
> just before) we load the crash kernel. Which means we should only
> be allowed to shrink the size when nothing is loaded, exactly the
> opposite of what you have implemented.
>
>

Confused, why just loading the crash kernel makes it unsafe?
DMA should be avoided when reserving that memory during boot, shouldn't it?

I know I missed the part that freeing memory before loading, but if it
is safe before loading, how can it be unsafe after that?

> You patch also plays with global kexec variables outside of the mutex
> before calling into shrink_crash_memory. If my memory serves just
> doing mutx_lock(&kexec_mutex) on this code path should be fine. The
> mutex_trylock on the other code paths is about having non-blocking
> behavior that you don't need here.
>

Hmm, yes, I will fix it... Thanks!