On Wednesday, January 30, 2013 05:16:22 PM H. Peter Anvin wrote: > I am NAKing 1/3 and think you seriously need to explain your design > choice for the rest. "Unnecessarily complex" is not an explanation, it > is a cop-out. Ok, 1/3 should not go in because it changes boot param processing which works like that for years. No problem. For the rest I explain the advantages here: > >This: > > - heavily cleans up the unnecesary reserved memory passing via memmap= > > - still provides a clean way of passing a valid e820 table through > > boot structures (no Linux kernel made up e820 type passing) > > - Keeps complexity as low as possible and at one place and does not > > involve kexec-tools as another error source (passing a badly > > mangled e820 table or not being able to consider stuff the kernel > > can when mangeling). If for some reason the e820 table in kdump case needs to be touched again, I am pretty sure you do not want to look up kexec-tools code. Also you won't be able to fix/workaround things in kexec-tools the way you can in the kernel. I also do not think it's a good idea to pass an unspecified, Linux kernel made up e820 type through the public boot interface. So looking from the other side, passing a modified e820 table only has disadvantages. The only advantage I can see that memmap=..,X at Y,W at Z needs not to be passed. But this is rather short and static now and not huge depending on the e820 reserved entries from the BIOS (and still obvious where it comes from and why it gets passed. Passing things hidden in a modified e820 boot structure is not a good idea). Again, please consider to take these (after rebasing without 1/3). If not I guess you have to explain me the advantages of passing a mangled e820 table which I do oversee. If they do not convince me I suggest we still take this or someone else has to touch the kexec-tools parts. Thomas
