Re: [PATCH 1/4] of/fdt: Update zone_dma_bits when running in bcm2711

Catalin Marinas
2020-10-12T08:47:56Z

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 08:47:15AM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 09, 2020 at 06:10:52PM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > kdump wants DMA-able memory and,
>
> DMAable by whom? The only way to guranteed DMAable memory is to use
> the DMA memory allocator(s) and pass a specific device to them. Everyting
> else is just fundamentally broken. Note that even when device is not
> DMAable we can still use swiotlb to access it.

What I meant is that the new kexec'ed kernel needs some memory in the
ZONE_DMA range, currently set to the bottom 30-bit even for platforms
that can cope with the whole 32-bit range (anything other than RPi4).
The memory range available to the kdump kernels is limited to what
reserve_crashkernel() allocated, which may not fit in the lower 1GB.

There are two ongoing threads (complementary):

1. Change the arm64 reserve_crashkernel() similar to x86 which allocates
memory above 4G with a small block in the ZONE_DMA range.

2. Allow zone_dma_bits to be 32 for arm64 platforms other than RPi4.

The second point also fixes some regressions with CMA reservations that
could no longer fit in the lower 1GB.

--
Catalin