Re: [RFC][PATCH] Expanding the size of "start" and "end" field in"struct resource"

From: Eric W. Biederman
Date: Wed Mar 15 2006 - 16:32:00 EST


Kumar Gala <galak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Mar 15, 2006, at 2:53 PM, Benjamin LaHaise wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 02:31:14PM -0500, Vivek Goyal wrote:
>>> Is there a reason why "start" and "end" field of "struct resource" are of
>>> type unsigned long. My understanding is that "struct resource" can be used
>>> to represent any system resource including physical memory. But unsigned
>>> long is not suffcient to represent memory more than 4GB on PAE systems.
>>> and compiler starts throwing warnings.
>>
>> Please make this depend on the kernel being compiled with PAE. We don't
>> need to bloat 32 bit kernels needlessly.
>
> I disagree. I think we need to look to see what the "bloat" is before we go
> and make start/end config dependent.
>
> It seems clear that drivers dont handle the fact that "start"/"end" change an
> 32-bit vs 64-bit archs to begin with. By making this even more config
> dependent seems to be asking for more trouble.

Especially as all resource access are rare slow path operations.

Depending on PAE and the like look like an optimization to consider after
getting the parts working.

Eric
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