Hi, [Sorry for the late reply and for not following the whole thread, I'm just busy.] * John Keller [2008-11-18 08:08]: > > This patch addresses a problem on SN Altix systems with < 4GB, where > device drivers using the dma_get_required_mask() API would be told > to use 32 bit DMA, when 64 bit is more efficient. > > How exactly the use of dma_get_required_mask() relates to the crash > kernel code you refer to is unclear to me. I'm not sure myself. The crashkernel reservation code on IA64 (for other architectures I don't know any machines that have basically their whole memory except a small amount which is used for booting mapped above 4 GiB physical address space) needs to check if it's okay to use memory for the crashkernel that is *all* above 4 GiB. This is only possible if a hardware IO/MMU is present (and working correctly in the kdump case which isn't the case on HP IA64) and SWIOTBL is not used because SWIOTBL needs some memory below that 4 GiB margin. Now I thought that there's a relationship between "memory above 4 GiB can be used for DMA" and the return value of dma_get_required_mask(). My assumption was: (dma_get_required_mask() & 0xffffffff00000000ull) > 0 -> memory above 4 GiB can be used for DMA and so the crashkernel memory can reside above 4 GiB (dma_get_required_mask() & 0xffffffff00000000ull) == 0 -> memory above 4 GiB can not be used for DMA and so the crashkernel memory can not all reside above 4 GiB Is that wrong? > If, for all platforms, the crash kernel code could use the mask returned > from dma_get_required_mask() to do its check, then switching the code > might be OK. But, if that's not possible for some platforms, then I'd > wonder if dma_get_required_mask() is being used in the wrong context in > this case. The crashkernel reservation code is different for every platform, so it does not matter. However, in theory I think the check would return correct results. Regards, Bernhard -- Bernhard Walle, SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Architecture Development -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ia64" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
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