Re: [PATCH v2 01/11] kexec: introduce kexec_ops struct

From: Jan Beulich
Date: Fri Nov 23 2012 - 04:55:48 EST


>>> On 22.11.12 at 18:37, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I actually talked to Ian Jackson at LCE, and mentioned among other
> things the bogosity of requiring a PUD page for three-level paging in
> Linux -- a bogosity which has spread from Xen into native. It's a page
> wasted for no good reason, since it only contains 32 bytes worth of
> data, *inherently*. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, it is
> *not* pa page table per se.
>
> Ian told me: "I didn't know we did that, and we shouldn't have to."
> Here we have suffered this overhead for at least six years, ...

Even the Xen kernel only needs the full page when running on a
64-bit hypervisor (now that we don't have a 32-bit hypervisor
anymore, that of course basically means always). But yes, I too
never liked this enforced over-allocation for native kernels (and
was surprised that it was allowed in at all).

Jan

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