[PATCH v3 4/4] xen: add helpers to allocate unpopulated memory

[Jürgen Groß]

On 27.07.20 11:13, Roger Pau Monne wrote:
> To be used in order to create foreign mappings. This is based on the
> ZONE_DEVICE facility which is used by persistent memory devices in
> order to create struct pages and kernel virtual mappings for the IOMEM
> areas of such devices. Note that on kernels without support for
> ZONE_DEVICE Xen will fallback to use ballooned pages in order to
> create foreign mappings.
> 
> The newly added helpers use the same parameters as the existing
> {alloc/free}_xenballooned_pages functions, which allows for in-place
> replacement of the callers. Once a memory region has been added to be
> used as scratch mapping space it will no longer be released, and pages
> returned are kept in a linked list. This allows to have a buffer of
> pages and prevents resorting to frequent additions and removals of
> regions.
> 
> If enabled (because ZONE_DEVICE is supported) the usage of the new
> functionality untangles Xen balloon and RAM hotplug from the usage of
> unpopulated physical memory ranges to map foreign pages, which is the
> correct thing to do in order to avoid mappings of foreign pages depend
> on memory hotplug.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau at citrix.com>
> ---
> I've not added a new memory_type type and just used
> MEMORY_DEVICE_DEVDAX which seems to be what we want for such memory
> regions. I'm unsure whether abusing this type is fine, or if I should
> instead add a specific type, maybe MEMORY_DEVICE_GENERIC? I don't
> think we should be using a specific Xen type at all.

What about introducing MEMORY_DEVICE_VIRT? The comment for
MEMORY_DEVICE_DEVDAX doesn't really fit, as there is no character device
involved.

In the end its the memory management maintainers to decide that.

Other than that you can have my

Reviewed-by: Juergen Gross <jgross at suse.com>


Juergen