From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <44717564.50607@shadowen.org> Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 09:25:08 +0100 From: Andy Whitcroft MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] Align the node_mem_map endpoints to a MAX_ORDER boundary References: <20060519134241.29021.84756.sendpatchset@skynet> <20060519134301.29021.71137.sendpatchset@skynet> <20060519134948.10992ba1.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <20060519134948.10992ba1.akpm@osdl.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Andrew Morton Cc: Mel Gorman , nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au, haveblue@us.ibm.com, ak@suse.de, bob.picco@hp.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, mingo@elte.hu, mbligh@mbligh.org List-ID: Andrew Morton wrote: > Mel Gorman wrote: > >>Andy added code to buddy allocator which does not require the zone's >>endpoints to be aligned to MAX_ORDER. An issue is that the buddy >>allocator requires the node_mem_map's endpoints to be MAX_ORDER aligned. >>Otherwise __page_find_buddy could compute a buddy not in node_mem_map for >>partial MAX_ORDER regions at zone's endpoints. page_is_buddy will detect >>that these pages at endpoints are not PG_buddy (they were zeroed out by >>bootmem allocator and not part of zone). Of course the negative here is >>we could waste a little memory but the positive is eliminating all the >>old checks for zone boundary conditions. >> >>SPARSEMEM won't encounter this issue because of MAX_ORDER size constraint >>when SPARSEMEM is configured. ia64 VIRTUAL_MEM_MAP doesn't need the >>logic either because the holes and endpoints are handled differently. >>This leaves checking alloc_remap and other arches which privately allocate >>for node_mem_map. > > > Do we think we need this in 2.6.17? I would say yes, it is a very low risk patch in my view and provides a very large part of the protections we require. i386 as our largest userbase should be safe from zone/node alignment issues with just this change. Others need slightly more (the page_zone_idx check) which is being discussed in another thread. -apw -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org