Thread (30 messages) 30 messages, 12 authors, 2011-06-12

Re: [PATCH] Make GFP_DMA allocations w/o ZONE_DMA emit a warning instead of failing

From: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Date: 2011-06-10 22:01:25
Also in: lkml

On Fri, 10 Jun 2011, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
quoted
quoted
quoted
Should one submit a patch adding a warning to GFP_DMA allocations
w/o ZONE_DMA, or the idea of the original patch is wrong?
Linus was far from impressed by the original commit, saying:
| Using GFP_DMA is reasonable in a driver - on platforms where that
| matters, it should allocate from the DMA zone, on platforms where it
| doesn't matter it should be a no-op.

So no, not even a warning.
Any words of wisdom for users with CONFIG_ZONE_DMA=n that actually use 
drivers where they need GFP_DMA?  The page allocator should just silently 
return memory from anywhere?
See Linus' reply.  I quote again "on platforms where it doesn't matter it
should be a no-op".  If _you_ have a problem with that _you_ need to
discuss it with _Linus_, not me.  I'm not going to be a middle-man sitting
between two people with different opinions.
We're talking about two different things.  Linus is saying that if GFP_DMA 
should be a no-op if the hardware doesn't require DMA memory because the 
kernel was correctly compiled without CONFIG_ZONE_DMA.  I'm asking about a 
kernel that was incorrectly compiled without CONFIG_ZONE_DMA and now we're 
returning memory from anywhere even though we actually require GFP_DMA.

If you don't want to form an opinion of your own, then I have no problem 
cc'ing Linus on it.  I don't think he'd object to a

	#ifndef CONFIG_ZONE_DMA
	WARN_ON_ONCE(1, "%s (%d): allocating DMA memory without DMA support -- "
			"enable CONFIG_ZONE_DMA if needed.\n",
			current->comm, current->pid);
	#endif

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