b3ba234171
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@redhat.com/ 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@redhat.com Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20231114091658.228030-3-bhe@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Baoquan He <bhe@redhat.com> Cc: AKASHI Takahiro <takahiro.akashi@linaro.org> Cc: Baoquan He <bhe@redhat.com> Cc: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.