Re: [PATCH v5 2/3] arm64: mmu: avoid allocating pages while splitting the linear mapping

Will Deacon
2026-01-19T17:29:02Z

On Mon, Jan 05, 2026 at 08:23:27PM +0000, Yeoreum Yun wrote:
> +static int __init linear_map_prealloc_split_pgtables(void)
> +{
> + int ret, i;
> + unsigned long lstart = _PAGE_OFFSET(vabits_actual);
> + unsigned long lend = PAGE_END;
> + unsigned long kstart = (unsigned long)lm_alias(_stext);
> + unsigned long kend = (unsigned long)lm_alias(__init_begin);
> +
> + const struct mm_walk_ops collect_to_split_ops = {
> + .pud_entry = collect_to_split_pud_entry,
> + .pmd_entry = collect_to_split_pmd_entry
> + };

Why do we need to rewalk the page-table here instead of collating the
number of block mappings we put down when creating the linear map in
the first place?

> + split_pgtables_idx = 0;
> + split_pgtables_count = 0;
> +
> + ret = walk_kernel_page_table_range_lockless(lstart, kstart,
> + &collect_to_split_ops,
> + NULL, NULL);
> + if (!ret)
> + ret = walk_kernel_page_table_range_lockless(kend, lend,
> + &collect_to_split_ops,
> + NULL, NULL);
> + if (ret || !split_pgtables_count)
> + goto error;
> +
> + ret = -ENOMEM;
> +
> + split_pgtables = kvmalloc(split_pgtables_count * sizeof(struct ptdesc *),
> + GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_ZERO);
> + if (!split_pgtables)
> + goto error;
> +
> + for (i = 0; i < split_pgtables_count; i++) {
> + /* The page table will be filled during splitting, so zeroing it is unnecessary. */
> + split_pgtables[i] = pagetable_alloc(GFP_PGTABLE_KERNEL & ~__GFP_ZERO, 0);
> + if (!split_pgtables[i])
> + goto error;

This looks potentially expensive on the boot path and only gets worse as
the amount of memory grows. Maybe we should predicate this preallocation
on preempt-rt?

Will