I got a bug report about a distro kernel not booting on a particular
machine. It would freeze during boot:
> ...
> Could not find start_pfn for node 1
> [boot]0015 Setup Done
> Built 2 zonelists in Node order, mobility grouping on. Total pages: 123783
> Policy zone: DMA
> Kernel command line:
> [boot]0020 XICS Init
> [boot]0021 XICS Done
> PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 32768 bytes)
> clocksource: timebase mult[7d0000] shift[22] registered
> Console: colour dummy device 80x25
> console handover: boot [udbg0] -> real [hvc0]
> Dentry cache hash table entries: 1048576 (order: 7, 8388608 bytes)
> Inode-cache hash table entries: 524288 (order: 6, 4194304 bytes)
> freeing bootmem node 0
I've reproduced this on 2.6.27.7. It is caused by commit
8f64e1f2d1 ("powerpc: Reserve in bootmem
lmb reserved regions that cross NUMA nodes").
The problem is that Jon took a loop which was (in pseudocode):
for_each_node(nid)
NODE_DATA(nid) = careful_alloc(nid);
setup_bootmem(nid);
reserve_node_bootmem(nid);
and broke it up into:
for_each_node(nid)
NODE_DATA(nid) = careful_alloc(nid);
setup_bootmem(nid);
for_each_node(nid)
reserve_node_bootmem(nid);
The issue comes in when the 'careful_alloc()' is called on a node with
no memory. It falls back to using bootmem from a previously-initialized
node. But, bootmem has not yet been reserved when Jon's patch is
applied. It gives back bogus memory (0xc000000000000000) and pukes
later in boot.
The following patch collapses the loop back together. It also breaks
the mark_reserved_regions_for_nid() code out into a function and adds
some comments. I think a huge part of introducing this bug is because
for loop was too long and hard to read.
The actual bug fix here is the:
+ if (end_pfn <= node->node_start_pfn ||
+ start_pfn >= node_end_pfn)
+ continue;
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
4a6186696e