Re: [PATCH 07/10] bootmem: add free_bootmem_late

Joerg Roedel
2009-11-16T10:27:32Z

On Sun, Nov 08, 2009 at 10:57:19AM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:

> Page tables is the main dependency. x86 boots with a limited set of page
> tables, the real ones are set up later.
>
> We'd need to see what bootmem allocations are done before page table
> init in practice. I think i did such tests a few years ago and i think
> it's rather limited (if it happens at all).
>
> If that's mapped out we can just convert x86 to an 'emulated' bootmem
> allocator: buddy and slab is set up right when pagetables are set up,
> and bootmem can just use kmalloc.

That sounds like a good idea. But keep in mind that support for 1GB
pages currently depends on the bootmem allocator because the buddy
system can not allocate 1GB of physically contiguous memory.
But I think this could also be handled from x86 arch code without the
bootmem allocator.

Joerg