On Tue, Jan 20, 2026 at 05:13:43PM +0200, Eugen Hristev wrote: > > > On 1/3/26 21:23, Mike Rapoport wrote: > > On Sat, Jan 03, 2026 at 08:36:40AM +0200, Eugen Hristev wrote: > >> > >> > >> On 12/29/25 08:56, Mike Rapoport wrote: > >>> Hi Eugen, > >>> > >>> On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 05:44:19PM +0200, Eugen Hristev wrote: > >>>> This memblock flag indicates that a specific block is registered > >>>> into an inspection table. > >>>> The block can be marked for inspection using memblock_mark_inspect() > >>>> and cleared with memblock_clear_inspect() > >>> > >>> Can you explain why memblock should treat memory registered for inspection > >>> differently? > >> > >> It should not, at a first glance. > >> > >> The purpose of the flag is to let memblock be aware of it. > >> The flag is there to have a "memblock way" of registering the memory, > >> which inside memblock , it can translate to a meminspect way of > >> registering the memory. It's just an extra layer on top of meminspect. > >> With this, it would be avoided to call meminspect all over the places it > >> would be required, but rather use the memblock API. > > > > memblock APIs are not available after boot on many architectures, most > > notable being x86. > > > > But regardless, I can't say I understand why using memblock APIs for > > meminspect is better than using meminspect directly. > > I'd imagine that using meminspect register APIs would actually make it more > > consistent and it would be easier to identify what memory is registered > > with meminspect. > > > > In the end, memblock_alloc*() returns dynamically allocated memory, just > > like kmalloc(), the difference is that memblock is active very early at > > boot and disappears after core MM initialization. > > Hi Mike, > > Thanks for sharing your opinion. > > David, what do you think, does it make sense to have this flag or we can > ditch it and use meminspect directly ? > > Also, for some memory blocks, they do not disappear ever, e.g. the > printk log buffer, it's allocated early and never freed, so it's > required to have some memblocks marked for inspection.
The allocated memory does not disappear, the memblock metadata does. > Eugen -- Sincerely yours, Mike.
