Re: [PATCH v2 01/20] e820, efi: add ACPI 6.0 persistent memory types

From: Andy Lutomirski
Date: Tue Apr 28 2015 - 17:05:35 EST


On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c b/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c
>>> index 11cc7d54ec3f..d38b53a7e9b2 100644
>>> --- a/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c
>>> +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c
>>> @@ -149,6 +149,7 @@ static void __init e820_print_type(u32 type)
>>> case E820_UNUSABLE:
>>> printk(KERN_CONT "unusable");
>>> break;
>>> + case E820_PMEM:
>>> case E820_PRAM:
>>> printk(KERN_CONT "persistent (type %u)", type);
>>> break;
>>
>> I'd kind of like to make it more clear what's going on here. It
>> doesn't help that the spec chose poor names.
>>
>> How about "NVDIMM physical aperture" for E820_PMEM and "legacy
>> persistent RAM" for E820_PRAM?
>
> The term "aperture" to me implies this BLK (mmio-windowed) mode of
> accessing persistent media that the NFIT specification introduces. In
> fact, those ranges are mapped E820_RESERVED. E820_PMEM really is a
> memory range that happens to be persistent.

Oh, I missed that. Yuck. What happens when you repartition one of
these things? (Can you even do that?)

>
>> Otherwise this looks generaly sensible, although I don't really
>> understand why e820_type_to_string and e820_print_type are different.
>
> e820_type_to_string() appears in /proc/iomem and seems to afford
> being more descriptive than e820_print_type() that just scrolls by in
> dmesg, but I'm just guessing.

Can we change that?

--
Andy Lutomirski
AMA Capital Management, LLC
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