The patch titled Subject: kexec_file: load kernel at top of system RAM if required has been added to the -mm mm-nonmm-unstable branch. Its filename is kexec_file-load-kernel-at-top-of-system-ram-if-required.patch This patch will shortly appear at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/25-new.git/tree/patches/kexec_file-load-kernel-at-top-of-system-ram-if-required.patch This patch will later appear in the mm-nonmm-unstable branch at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm Before you just go and hit "reply", please: a) Consider who else should be cc'ed b) Prefer to cc a suitable mailing list as well c) Ideally: find the original patch on the mailing list and do a reply-to-all to that, adding suitable additional cc's *** Remember to use Documentation/process/submit-checklist.rst when testing your code *** The -mm tree is included into linux-next via the mm-everything branch at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm and is updated there every 2-3 working days ------------------------------------------------------ From: Baoquan He <bhe@xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: kexec_file: load kernel at top of system RAM if required Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2023 17:16:58 +0800 Patch series "kexec_file: Load kernel at top of system RAM if required". Justification: ============== Kexec_load interface has been doing top down searching and loading kernel/initrd/purgtory etc to prepare for kexec reboot. In that way, the benefits are that it avoids to consume and fragment limited low memory which satisfy DMA buffer allocation and big chunk of continuous memory during system init; and avoids to stir with BIOS/FW reserved or occupied areas, or corner case handling/work around/quirk occupied areas when doing system init. By the way, the top-down searching and loading of kexec-ed kernel is done in user space utility code. For kexec_file loading, even if kexec_buf.top_down is 'true', it's simply ignored. It calls walk_system_ram_res() directly to go through all resources of System RAM bottom up, to find an available memory region, then call locate_mem_hole_callback() to allocate memory in that found memory region from top to down. This is not expected and inconsistent with kexec_load. Implementation =============== In patch 1, introduce a new function walk_system_ram_res_rev() which is a variant of walk_system_ram_res(), it walks through a list of all the resources of System RAM in reversed order, i.e., from higher to lower. In patch 2, check if kexec_buf.top_down is 'true' in kexec_walk_resources(), if yes, call walk_system_ram_res_rev() to find memory region of system RAM from top to down to load kernel/initrd etc. Background information: ======================= And I ever tried this in the past in a different way, please see below link. In the post, I tried to adjust struct sibling linking code, replace the the singly linked list with list_head so that walk_system_ram_res_rev() can be implemented in a much easier way. Finally I failed. https://lore.kernel.org/all/20180718024944.577-4-bhe@xxxxxxxxxx/ This time, I picked up the patch from AKASHI Takahiro's old post and made some change to take as the current patch 1: https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2017-September/531456.html This patch (of 2): Kexec_load interface has been doing top down searching and loading kernel/initrd/purgtory etc to prepare for kexec reboot. In that way, the benefits are that it avoids to consume and fragment limited low memory which satisfy DMA buffer allocation and big chunk of continuous memory during system init; and avoids to stir with BIOS/FW reserved or occupied areas, or corner case handling/work around/quirk occupied areas when doing system init. By the way, the top-down searching and loading of kexec-ed kernel is done in user space utility code. For kexec_file loading, even if kexec_buf.top_down is 'true', it's simply ignored. It calls walk_system_ram_res() directly to go through all resources of System RAM bottom up, to find an available memory region, then call locate_mem_hole_callback() to allocate memory in that found memory region from top to down. This is not expected and inconsistent with kexec_load. Here check if kexec_buf.top_down is 'true' in kexec_walk_resources(), if yes, call the newly added walk_system_ram_res_rev() to find memory region of system RAM from top to down to load kernel/initrd etc. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20231114091658.228030-1-bhe@xxxxxxxxxx Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20231114091658.228030-3-bhe@xxxxxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Baoquan He <bhe@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: AKASHI Takahiro <takahiro.akashi@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Baoquan He <bhe@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/kexec_file.c | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) --- a/kernel/kexec_file.c~kexec_file-load-kernel-at-top-of-system-ram-if-required +++ a/kernel/kexec_file.c @@ -592,6 +592,8 @@ static int kexec_walk_resources(struct k IORESOURCE_SYSTEM_RAM | IORESOURCE_BUSY, crashk_res.start, crashk_res.end, kbuf, func); + else if (kbuf->top_down) + return walk_system_ram_res_rev(0, ULONG_MAX, kbuf, func); else return walk_system_ram_res(0, ULONG_MAX, kbuf, func); } _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from bhe@xxxxxxxxxx are resource-add-walk_system_ram_res_rev.patch kexec_file-load-kernel-at-top-of-system-ram-if-required.patch