Re: HOLES_IN_ZONE...

From: Heiko Carstens
Date: Thu Feb 05 2009 - 03:00:35 EST


On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:26:51 -0800 (PST)
David Miller <davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I also noticed that when S390 got virtual memmap support, it acquired
> the HOLES_IN_ZONE setting as well, in this commit:
>
> commit f4eb07c17df2e6cf9bd58bfcd9cc9e05e9489d07
> Author: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Fri Dec 8 15:56:07 2006 +0100
>
> [S390] Virtual memmap for s390.
>
> This is confusing. Is HOLES_IN_ZONE only required when virtual mmap
> is being used? If so, why is that? This is a very poorly documented
> flag, and I'm saying this after pouring over every commit referencing
> it.

I should have split that into two commits back then. When writing the
vmemmap code for s390 I realized that we never guaranteed that zones
start on a MAX_ORDER boundary or have a size that is a multiple of
MAX_ORDER. So I just added HOLES_IN_ZONE.

> Later this HOLES_IN_ZONE requirement was removed on s390 by commit:
>
> commit 9f4b0ba81f158df459fa2cfc98ab1475c090f29c
> Author: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Sat Jan 26 14:11:02 2008 +0100
>
> [S390] Get rid of HOLES_IN_ZONE requirement.

This just made sure that all zones start on a MAX_ORDER boundary and
just leaves memory that doesn't fit unused. So the requirement for
HOLES_IN_ZONE went away.

Later I reduced MAX_ORDER to 9 on s390, so we don't leave large
portions of memory unused.
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