Re: [PATCH] fancy new memory detection, for pre-patch-2.3.48-2

From: Jeff Garzik (jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com)
Date: Mon Feb 28 2000 - 15:35:38 EST


david parsons wrote:
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > On Mon, 28 Feb 2000 nathan.zook@amd.com wrote:
> > >
> > > You specifically mentioned es:di being changed as a don't care. The problem
> > > is that the ACPI spec (Table 14.2) describes es:di out as, "Return Address
> > > Range Descriptor pointer. Same value as on input."
> >
> > Feel free to do sanity checking.
> >
> > But no config options.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > I'm looking at the current patch, and I'm left wondering which magic
> > combination of options I would choose as a vendor.
>
> This is a point that Nathan and I have been debating about for quite
> some time. He's much more paranoid than I am and is assuming that
> bios vendors WILL promiscuously break the e820 system call, while
> I've been saying that if this happens every Windows (and Linux)
> machine will stop working on this bios, which is a pretty powerful
> incentive to not break things.
>
> But doing the paranoia checking is pretty cheap.
>
> As a vendor, I don't want to do it because it's like constantly
> checking to make sure that 2+2 = 4, but I can also see why a
> motherboard or processor vendor might want to pull open all the
> stops while validating a bios.

Well, it is cheap since it can easily be __init code, so please consider
doing ALL checks, paranoid or not.

IMHO MandrakeSoft would always compile in the paranoid checks, simply
because you never know what sort of filth like buggy BIOS is out
there...

-- 
Jeff Garzik              | "Are you the police?"
Building 1024            | 
MandrakeSoft, Inc.       | "No ma'am.  We're musicians."

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