Re: [openib-general] [PATCH 11 of 20] ipath - core driver, part 4 of 4

[Roland Dreier <rdreier@cisco.com>]

I didn't notice this before:

 > + * This is volatile as it's the target of a DMA from the chip.
 > + */
 > +
 > +static volatile uint64_t ipath_port0_rcvhdrtail[512]
 > +    __attribute__ ((aligned(4096)));

 ... and then much later ...

 > +	/*
 > +	 * kernel modules loaded into vmalloc'ed memory,
 > +	 * verify that when we assume that, map to phys, and back to virt,
 > +	 * that we get the right contents, so we did the mapping right.
 > +	 */
 > +	vpage = vmalloc_to_page((void *)ipath_port0_rcvhdrtail);
 > +	if (vpage == NOPAGE_SIGBUS || vpage == NOPAGE_OOM) {
 > +		_IPATH_UNIT_ERROR(t, "vmalloc_to_page for rcvhdrtail fails!\n");
 > +		ret = -ENOMEM;
 > +		goto done;
 > +	}

This seems very wrong to me: there's no guarantee that a module will
be loaded into memory that can be used as a DMA target.  For example,
on a non-cache-coherent architecture, I think this memory must be
accessed through a non-cached mapping.

I think the correct solution is to allocate a buffer for each device
with pci_alloc_consistent() (or maybe dma_alloc_coherent()).

(As a general comment, I'm still unhappy about how your driver has a
static, fixed-size table of devices rather than allocating per-device
data structures dynamically)

 - R.