Re: [PATCH] i386: For debugging, make the initial page table setup less forgiving.

Eric W. Biederman
2007-04-25T18:24:46Z

"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> writes:

> Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>>> This patch only affects the initial page tables, which should have been
>>> thrown out *way* long ago at this point.
>>
>> Yes. I noticed this was happening a few days ago.
>> I must not have mentioned it loudly enough.
>
> You mentioned the continued use of init_mm. This is *very* different.
>
> What we're seeing here is that ON PSE-CAPABLE HARDWARE, we continue to
> not just use the init_mm page directory, but the actual page *tables*,
> which should all have been replaced with PSE large pages to begin with.

That is what I meant if not what I communicated. If you read the code that
is exactly what it is trying to do.

> Reusing the initial page tables on non-PSE-capable hardware *sort of*
> makes sense, but his hardware should not fall in that category, I don't
> think? (Unless it's one of these machines that fall over if you map the
> bottom 4 MB with PSE pages?)

I agree that I don't think the current behaviour makes sense. I think
the code has accumulated so many small modifications that is very far
from making sense in the corner cases.

arch/i386 either needs to be frozen as a legacy only thing or
it needs to be cleaned up so we can continue to enhance the code.

Eric