On Tue, 2020-07-21 at 14:36 -0400, Alex Ghiti wrote: > > > I guess I don't understand why this is necessary at all. > > > Specifically: why > > > can't we just relocate the kernel within the linear map? That would > > > let the > > > bootloader put the kernel wherever it wants, modulo the physical > > > memory size we > > > support. We'd need to handle the regions that are coupled to the > > > kernel's > > > execution address, but we could just put them in an explicit memory > > > region > > > which is what we should probably be doing anyway. > > > > Virtual relocation in the linear mapping requires to move the kernel > > physically too. Zong implemented this physical move in its KASLR RFC > > patchset, which is cumbersome since finding an available physical spot > > is harder than just selecting a virtual range in the vmalloc range. > > > > In addition, having the kernel mapping in the linear mapping prevents > > the use of hugepage for the linear mapping resulting in performance loss > > (at least for the GB that encompasses the kernel). > > > > Why do you find this "ugly" ? The vmalloc region is just a bunch of > > available virtual addresses to whatever purpose we want, and as noted by > > Zong, arm64 uses the same scheme.
I don't get it :-) At least on powerpc we move the kernel in the linear mapping and it works fine with huge pages, what is your problem there ? You rely on punching small-page size holes in there ? At least in the old days, there were a number of assumptions that the kernel text/data/bss resides in the linear mapping. If you change that you need to ensure that it's still physically contiguous and you'll have to tweak __va and __pa, which might induce extra overhead. Cheers, Ben.
