linux/arch
Ingo Molnar edce21216a x86/boot: Reorganize and clean up the BIOS area reservation code
So the reserve_ebda_region() code has accumulated a number of
problems over the years that make it really difficult to read
and understand:

- The calculation of 'lowmem' and 'ebda_addr' is an unnecessarily
  interleaved mess of first lowmem, then ebda_addr, then lowmem tweaks...

- 'lowmem' here means 'super low mem' - i.e. 16-bit addressable memory. In other
  parts of the x86 code 'lowmem' means 32-bit addressable memory... This makes it
  super confusing to read.

- It does not help at all that we have various memory range markers, half of which
  are 'start of range', half of which are 'end of range' - but this crucial
  property is not obvious in the naming at all ... gave me a headache trying to
  understand all this.

- Also, the 'ebda_addr' name sucks: it highlights that it's an address (which is
  obvious, all values here are addresses!), while it does not highlight that it's
  the _start_ of the EBDA region ...

- 'BIOS_LOWMEM_KILOBYTES' says a lot of things, except that this is the only value
  that is a pointer to a value, not a memory range address!

- The function name itself is a misnomer: it says 'reserve_ebda_region()' while
  its main purpose is to reserve all the firmware ROM typically between 640K and
  1MB, while the 'EBDA' part is only a small part of that ...

- Likewise, the paravirt quirk flag name 'ebda_search' is misleading as well: this
  too should be about whether to reserve firmware areas in the paravirt case.

- In fact thinking about this as 'end of RAM' is confusing: what this function
  *really* wants to reserve is firmware data and code areas! Once the thinking is
  inverted from a mixed 'ram' and 'reserved firmware area' notion to a pure
  'reserved area' notion everything becomes a lot clearer.

To improve all this rewrite the whole code (without changing the logic):

- Firstly invert the naming from 'lowmem end' to 'BIOS reserved area start'
  and propagate this concept through all the variable names and constants.

	BIOS_RAM_SIZE_KB_PTR		// was: BIOS_LOWMEM_KILOBYTES

	BIOS_START_MIN			// was: INSANE_CUTOFF

	ebda_start			// was: ebda_addr
	bios_start			// was: lowmem

	BIOS_START_MAX			// was: LOWMEM_CAP

- Then clean up the name of the function itself by renaming it
  to reserve_bios_regions() and renaming the ::ebda_search paravirt
  flag to ::reserve_bios_regions.

- Fix up all the comments (fix typos), harmonize and simplify their
  formulation and remove comments that become unnecessary due to
  the much better naming all around.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
2016-07-21 10:11:57 +02:00
..
alpha tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
arc ARC Fix for 4.7-rc6 2016-06-30 09:53:43 -07:00
arm KVM/ARM Fixes for v4.7-rc6: 2016-06-30 17:11:20 +02:00
arm64 Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2016-06-24 19:08:33 -07:00
avr32 tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
blackfin printk/nmi: generic solution for safe printk in NMI 2016-05-20 17:58:30 -07:00
c6x asm-generic patch for 4.7 2016-05-24 15:24:37 -07:00
cris tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
frv tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
h8300 Merge branch 'hash' of git://ftp.sciencehorizons.net/linux 2016-05-28 16:15:25 -07:00
hexagon tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
ia64 fix up initial thread stack pointer vs thread_info confusion 2016-06-24 17:07:33 -07:00
m32r Merge branch 'kbuild' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mmarek/kbuild 2016-05-26 22:01:22 -07:00
m68k tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
metag tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
microblaze tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
mips MIPS: Fix possible corruption of cache mode by mprotect. 2016-07-02 01:51:39 +02:00
mn10300 Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2016-06-24 19:08:33 -07:00
nios2 nios2: get rid of superfluous __GFP_REPEAT 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
openrisc tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
parisc parisc: get rid of superfluous __GFP_REPEAT 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
powerpc powerpc fixes for 4.7 #5 2016-07-02 17:47:54 -07:00
s390 s390: fix test_fp_ctl inline assembly contraints 2016-06-28 09:24:28 +02:00
score score: get rid of superfluous __GFP_REPEAT 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
sh sh: get rid of superfluous __GFP_REPEAT 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
sparc sparc: get rid of superfluous __GFP_REPEAT 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
tile Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2016-06-24 19:08:33 -07:00
um tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
unicore32 unicore32: get rid of superfluous __GFP_REPEAT 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
x86 x86/boot: Reorganize and clean up the BIOS area reservation code 2016-07-21 10:11:57 +02:00
xtensa tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I 2016-06-24 17:23:52 -07:00
.gitignore
Kconfig Clarify naming of thread info/stack allocators 2016-06-24 15:09:37 -07:00