Re: [PATCH] mm/hotplug, x86: Disable ARCH_MEMORY_PROBE by default

From: KOSAKI Motohiro
Date: Wed Jul 17 2013 - 19:34:04 EST


On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@xxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, 2013-07-17 at 19:22 -0400, KOSAKI Motohiro wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 5:45 PM, Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@xxxxxx> wrote:
>> > CONFIG_ARCH_MEMORY_PROBE enables /sys/devices/system/memory/probe
>> > interface, which allows a given memory address to be hot-added as
>> > follows. (See Documentation/memory-hotplug.txt for more detail.)
>> >
>> > # echo start_address_of_new_memory > /sys/devices/system/memory/probe
>> >
>> > This probe interface is required on powerpc. On x86, however, ACPI
>> > notifies a memory hotplug event to the kernel, which performs its
>> > hotplug operation as the result. Therefore, users should not be
>> > required to use this interface on x86. This probe interface is also
>> > error-prone that the kernel blindly adds a given memory address
>> > without checking if the memory is present on the system; no probing
>> > is done despite of its name. The kernel crashes when a user requests
>> > to online a memory block that is not present on the system.
>> >
>> > This patch disables CONFIG_ARCH_MEMORY_PROBE by default on x86,
>> > and clarifies it in Documentation/memory-hotplug.txt.
>>
>> Why don't you completely remove it? Who should use this strange interface?
>
> According to the comment below, this probe interface is used on powerpc.
> So, we cannot remove it, but to disable it on x86.

I meant x86. Why can't we completely remove ARCH_MEMORY_PROBE section
from x86 Kconfig?
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