Right now user-space tools like 'makedumpfile' and 'crash' need to rely
on a best-guess method of determining value of 'MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS'
supported by underlying kernel.

This value is used in user-space code to calculate the bit-space
required to store a section for SPARESMEM (similar to the existing
calculation method used in the kernel implementation):

  #define SECTIONS_SHIFT    (MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS - SECTION_SIZE_BITS)

Now, regressions have been reported in user-space utilities
like 'makedumpfile' and 'crash' on arm64, with the recently added
kernel support for 52-bit physical address space, as there is
no clear method of determining this value in user-space
(other than reading kernel CONFIG flags).

As per suggestion from makedumpfile maintainer (Kazu), it makes more
sense to append 'MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS' to vmcoreinfo in the core code itself
rather than in arch-specific code, so that the user-space code for other
archs can also benefit from this addition to the vmcoreinfo and use it
as a standard way of determining 'SECTIONS_SHIFT' value in user-land.

A reference 'makedumpfile' implementation which reads the
'MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS' value from vmcoreinfo in a arch-independent fashion
is available here:

[0]. https://github.com/bhupesh-sharma/makedumpfile/blob/remove-max-phys-mem-bit-v1/arch/ppc64.c#L471

Cc: Boris Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <redacted>
Cc: James Morse <james.morse@arm.com>
Cc: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Cc: Steve Capper <redacted>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Ard Biesheuvel <redacted>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <redacted>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Dave Anderson <redacted>
Cc: Kazuhito Hagio <redacted>
Cc: x86@kernel.org
Cc: linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org
Cc: linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Cc: kexec@lists.infradead.org
Signed-off-by: Bhupesh Sharma <redacted>
---
 kernel/crash_core.c | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

diff --git a/kernel/crash_core.c b/kernel/crash_core.c
index 9f1557b98468..18175687133a 100644
--- a/kernel/crash_core.c
+++ b/kernel/crash_core.c

@@ -413,6 +413,7 @@ static int __init crash_save_vmcoreinfo_init(void)
 	VMCOREINFO_LENGTH(mem_section, NR_SECTION_ROOTS);
 	VMCOREINFO_STRUCT_SIZE(mem_section);
 	VMCOREINFO_OFFSET(mem_section, section_mem_map);
+	VMCOREINFO_NUMBER(MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS);
 #endif
 	VMCOREINFO_STRUCT_SIZE(page);
 	VMCOREINFO_STRUCT_SIZE(pglist_data);

-- 
2.7.4