Re: [PATCH 0/10] x86: handle HW IOMMU initialization failure gracely

Joerg Roedel
2009-10-28T13:21:34Z

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 03:47:34PM +0900, FUJITA Tomonori wrote:
> If HW IOMMU initialization fails (Intel VT-d often does typically due
> to BIOS bugs), we fall back to nommu. It doesn't work for the majority
> since nowadays we have more than 4GB memory so we must use swiotlb
> instead of nommu.
>
> The problem is that it's too late to initialize swiotlb when HW IOMMU
> initialization fails. We need to allocate swiotlb memory earlier from
> bootmem allocator. Chris explained the issue in detail:
>
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=125657444317079&w=2
>
>
> The current x86 IOMMU initialization sequence is too complicated and
> handling the above issue makes it more hacky.
>
> This series changes x86 IOMMU initialization sequence to handle the
> above issue cleanly.
>
> The new x86 IOMMU initialization sequence are:
>
> 1. initializing swiotlb (and setting swiotlb to 1) in the case of
> (max_pfn > MAX_DMA32_PFN && !no_iommu). dma_ops is set to
> swiotlb_dma_ops or nommu_dma_ops.
>
> 2. calling the detection functions of all the IOMMUs
>
> 3. the detection function sets x86_init.iommu.iommu_init to the IOMMU
> initialization function (so we can avoid calling the initialization
> functions of all the IOMMUs needlessly).
>
> 4. if the IOMMU initialization function doesn't need to swiotlb then
> sets swiotlb to zero (e.g. the initialization is sucessful).
>
> 5. if we find that swiotlb is set to zero, we free swiotlb resource.

I started to test this patchset. It breaks the iommu=soft selection to
force using swiotlb usage. On my machine always the AMD IOMMU driver
gots selected and initialized.

Joerg