netdev - Re: oops/warning report for the week of November 26, 2008

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Date:	Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:28:00 -0800
From:	Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
Cc:	Yinghai Lu <yinghai@...nel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	NetDev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>, x86@...nel.org,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>,
	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	jesse Barnes <jbarnes@...tuousgeek.org>
Subject: Re: oops/warning report for the week of November 26, 2008

On Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:18:36 +0100
Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu> wrote:

> 
> * Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com> wrote:
> 
> > Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >> * Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Rank 8: mtrr_trim_uncached_memory (warning)
> >>> 	Reported 227 times (619 total reports)
> >>> 	There is a high number of machines where our MTRR checks
> >>> 	trigger. I suspect we are too picky in accepting the MTRR
> >>> 	configuration.
> >>
> >> the warning here means: "the BIOS messed up but we fixed it up for
> >> you just fine".
> >
> > I don't believe that right now. we see so many of these, including 
> > many "there's no MTRRs at all", that I am seriously suspecting that 
> > our code is just incorrect somehow and triggering too much.
> 
> well we looked at existing reports and Linux was right to fix them
> up. Show us one that is incorrect, then we can fix it up.
> 
> the "no MTRR's" are vmware/(also qemu?) guests not implementing a
> full CPU emulation.

... and it's still our fault in part, since we don't even check to see
if a cpu claims to support MTRR before complaining about it...

easy to fix though:

>From 7e987ae541c41ce908b414fee9d8e2fd2099a083 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:25:47 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] x86: make sure the CPU advertizes MTRR support before complaining about the lack thereoff...

We complain loudly if a CPU does not have MTRR support... but we don't check if the CPU
exposes MTRR support in the CPUID flags first. While this might not fix all of the
broken virtualization systems out there, it will at least fix those that properly don't
advertize things they don't support.

Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com>
---
 arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mtrr/main.c |    2 ++
 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mtrr/main.c b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mtrr/main.c
index 1159e26..0044e61 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mtrr/main.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mtrr/main.c
@@ -1567,6 +1567,8 @@ int __init mtrr_trim_uncached_memory(unsigned long end_pfn)
 	 * Make sure we only trim uncachable memory on machines that
 	 * support the Intel MTRR architecture:
 	 */
+	if (!cpu_has_mtrr)
+		return 0;
 	if (!is_cpu(INTEL) || disable_mtrr_trim)
 		return 0;
 	rdmsr(MTRRdefType_MSR, def, dummy);
-- 
1.6.0.4



-- 
Arjan van de Ven 	Intel Open Source Technology Centre
For development, discussion and tips for power savings, 
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