Re: [PATCH v7 24/27] x86: Add swiotlb force off support

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 06:42:47PM -0800, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 11:15:56PM -0800, Yinghai Lu wrote:
> >> So use could disable swiotlb from command line, even swiotlb support
> >> is compiled in.  Just like we have intel_iommu=on and intel_iommu=off.
> >
> > You really need to spell out why this is useful.
> 
> YH why can't we safely autodetect that the swiotlb is unusable when
> there is no memory below 4G free?

I am not sure what 'YH' stands for (Yeah?).

However we could turn SWIOTLB off altogether if it cannot allocate
_some_ memory. It could try first 64MB, then 32MB, lastly 16MB. And
if all that fails - print a nice warning and continue on.

Later in the late initialization phase, when pci_swiotlb_late_init
is called - it can then figure out whether 'iommu' has been set
and it iself was never able to allocate. At that point it can try
the dynamic allocation (swiotlb_late_init_with_default_size)
... and if that fails give up and panic.
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