lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2008]   [Jun]   [9]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
SubjectRe: [PATCH 03/15] x86: remove early_gdt_descr reference
From
Date
On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 12:49 -0300, Glauber Costa wrote:
> James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 11:16 -0300, Glauber Costa wrote:
> >> since we use switch_to_new_gdt, there is no point
> >> in assigning early_gdt_descr except for the first
> >> assignment, which is done manually.
> >
> > What makes you think you can do this? If you don't update the early
> > boot gdt, they all end up using the Boot CPU one. The problem with this
> > is that there's a time from start_secondary to switch_to_new_gdt where
> > the per cpu selector (%fs) and the pda selector (%gs) are those of the
> > boot CPU. The former isn't a problem but the CPU number is in the
> > latter, and it's used in that path before we get to the initialisation.
>
> You are right, I missed it.
>
> However, it only seem to be used in cpu_init, and very early. Sure there
> are some users _before_ we load the new gdt, but nothing prevents them
> to be moved after it. (Of course, this patch is wrong anyway).
>
> And if we do that, we can even take the %fs loading out of head_32.S
> Of course, it's only valid if those are indeed the only early users of it.
>
> Is there any other use I'm missing?

Well, %fs loading there is done for the boot CPU. To eliminate that you
have to not only verify that start_secondary doesn't use anything in
per_cpu areas, but also verify that nothing in start_kernel() up until
boot_cpu_init() does ... That's a lot of smp_processor_id() references
to convert.

James




\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2008-06-09 19:23    [W:0.079 / U:0.236 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site