On 19.08.20 13:53, Mike Rapoport wrote:

On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 12:49:05PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:

quoted

On 18.08.20 16:15, Mike Rapoport wrote:

quoted

From: Mike Rapoport <redacted>

Taking pages out from the direct map and bringing them back may create
undesired fragmentation and usage of the smaller pages in the direct
mapping of the physical memory.

This can be avoided if a significantly large area of the physical memory
would be reserved for secretmem purposes at boot time.

Add ability to reserve physical memory for secretmem at boot time using
"secretmem" kernel parameter and then use that reserved memory as a global
pool for secret memory needs.

Wouldn't something like CMA be the better fit? Just wondering. Then, the
memory can actually be reused for something else while not needed.

The memory allocated as secret is removed from the direct map and the
boot time reservation is intended to reduce direct map fragmentatioan
and to avoid splitting 1G pages there. So with CMA I'd still need to
allocate 1G chunks for this and once 1G page is dropped from the direct
map it still cannot be reused for anything else until it is freed.

I could use CMA to do the boot time reservation, but doing the
reservesion directly seemed simpler and more explicit to me.

Well, using CMA would give you the possibility to let the memory be used
for other purposes until you decide it's the right time to take it +
remove the direct mapping etc.

I wonder if a sane approach would be to require to allocate a pool
during boot and only take pages ever from that pool. That would avoid
spilling many unmovable pages all over the place, locally limiting them
to your area here.

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb