MIPS and pci_alloc_consistent()?

MIPS and pci_alloc_consistent()?

[Shuanglin Wang]

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I tried to use the pci_alloc_consistent() to allocate one-page  DMA'able
memory for my device driver.  But, when booting up the system, it was
always  failed to execute the pci_alloc_consistent() by showing some
memory errors.

I traced the code to the function __alloc_page() in the file
mm/page_alloc.c, and found the system called  "wakeup_kswapd()".  But at
that time,  the kswapd process pointer is a NULL pointer and the
wakeup-related codes don't check the pointer is NULL or not,  so the
system was stopped because of dereferencing the null pointer.

I'm working on a MIPS SEAD-2 board using Linux kernel 2.4.3 MIPS
distrinution.
Anybody has some ideas about the problem?  Or are there other convenient
methods to allocate DMA'able memory?

Thanks,

--
Shuanglin Wang
Atmel Multimedia & Communications
3800 Gateway Centre, Suite 311
Morrisville, NC 27560



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Re: MIPS and pci_alloc_consistent()?

[Ralf Baechle]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 04:23:49PM -0500, Shuanglin Wang wrote:

> I tried to use the pci_alloc_consistent() to allocate one-page  DMA'able
> memory for my device driver.  But, when booting up the system, it was
> always  failed to execute the pci_alloc_consistent() by showing some
> memory errors.
>
> I traced the code to the function __alloc_page() in the file
> mm/page_alloc.c, and found the system called  "wakeup_kswapd()".  But at
> that time,  the kswapd process pointer is a NULL pointer and the
> wakeup-related codes don't check the pointer is NULL or not,  so the
> system was stopped because of dereferencing the null pointer.

This sounds like either memory corruption has overwritten the kernel pointer
or you're trying to use pci_alloc_consistent before the memory managment
is initialized.

> Anybody has some ideas about the problem?  Or are there other convenient
> methods to allocate DMA'able memory?

Anything else than the pci_alloc_* functions isn't portable.

  Ralf