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From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
To: Joerg Roedel <joerg.roedel@amd.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
	tglx@linutronix.de, mingo@redhat.com,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] X86: don't print a warning when MTRR are blank and running in KVM
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:48:30 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20080222124830.GA25902@elte.hu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20080222111518.GA6504@amd.com>


* Joerg Roedel <joerg.roedel@amd.com> wrote:

> > ok. Then i guess we should just leave the warning and the backtrace 
> > in place until they get a fix done?
> 
> No. I don't agree. The MTRRs are set up by the BIOS because it knows 
> the hardware best (I know this is only true in theory). The OS should 
> basically trust the BIOS MTRR settings. If the OS can't trust the 
> BIOS, like on real hardware, the check and the warning is necessary. 
> If the OS can trust the BIOS, like running in a KVM or QEMU virtual 
> machine, it should just ignore the case where all MTRRs are blank.

well, i can agree with the warning being pointless on KVM paravirt, but 
it's not pointless in the Qemu context.

we fundamentall _dont_ trust the BIOS's MTRR settings, just check the 
very function that you modified: mtrr_trim_uncached_memory() - that 
function handles _exactly_ a case where a BIOS messes up MTRR's. This 
problem has caused real user-side breakage and just not emitting a 
warning because Qemu is lazy to emulate a proper PC is not a strong 
enough argument.

so i've applied the KVM bits but the warning stays for Qemu.

	Ingo

      reply	other threads:[~2008-02-22 12:48 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2008-02-21 14:50 [PATCH] X86: don't print a warning when MTRR are blank and running in KVM Joerg Roedel
2008-02-21 19:54 ` Yinghai Lu
2008-02-22 11:18   ` Joerg Roedel
2008-02-21 20:37 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-02-21 22:31   ` H. Peter Anvin
2008-02-22  9:45     ` Ingo Molnar
2008-02-22  9:58       ` H. Peter Anvin
2008-02-22 10:00         ` Ingo Molnar
2008-02-22 10:04           ` H. Peter Anvin
2008-02-22 11:15           ` Joerg Roedel
2008-02-22 12:48             ` Ingo Molnar [this message]

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