Re: [Xen-devel] Re: [PATCH 1 of 7] x86: add _PAGE_IOMAP pte flag for IO mappings

Jeremy Fitzhardinge
2008-09-10T16:38:57Z

Avi Kivity wrote:
> Actually it's more of a "no struct page" flag, which implies no
> refcounting.

Hm, is that actually true enough to define it? Could we rename it
something like _PAGE_NOSTRUCTPAGE or something a bit more specific than
"special"?

> And not having a struct page should correspond well to a pte not
> requiring pfn->mfn conversion and being an I/O page.

But _PAGE_SPECIAL is only set in a few places. It's not set in ioremap
mappings and so on. Should it be?

There's also the hiccup that it gets set in a pte with pte_mkspecial() -
but at that point its too late because you've already constructed the
pte and done the pfn->mfn conversion. _PAGE_IOMAP can only be set when
you initially construct the pte out of a frame number and a pgprot.

J