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From: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
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Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2015 16:59:19 +0200
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Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] KVM: x86: Add host physical address width
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To: Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>, Bandan Das <bsd@redhat.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kvm@vger.kernel.org, qemu-devel@nongnu.org



On 10/07/2015 16:57, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> > > ... In any case, please understand that I'm not campaigning for this
> > > warning :) IIRC the warning was your (very welcome!) idea after I
> > > reported the problem; I'm just trying to ensure that the warning match
> > > the exact issue I encountered.
> > 
> > Yup.  I think the right thing to do would be to hide memory above the
> > limit.
> How so?
> 
> - The stack would not be doing what the user asks for. Pass -m <a_lot>,
> and the guest would silently see less memory. If the user found out,
> he'd immediately ask (or set out debugging) why. I think if the user's
> request cannot be satisfied, the stack should fail hard.

That's another possibility.  I think both of them are wrong depending on
_why_ you're using "-m <a lot>" in the first place.

Considering that this really happens (on Xeons) only for 1TB+ guests,
it's probably just for debugging and then hiding the memory makes some
sense.

Paolo