AW: Re: __setup_cpu_be problem

[Geoff Levand]

Olof Johansson wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 03:14:47PM -0800, Geoff Levand wrote:
>> Hollis Blanchard wrote:
> 
>> I guess what I am thinking of are cases like when the firmware has no
>> clue and just uses defaults, or when the firmware or hypervisor
>> expect the kernel to set what sizes work best for it.  In these
>> cases a change needs to be initiated by the kernel.
> 
> But then give the firmware a clue, and fix it. For the partitioned
> case, I'm sure you have ways for an alpha partition to define the
> characteristics of a guest partition, and/or a small controller image
> running in your hypervisor for similar purposes.
> 
> If the kernel needs to set "what works best for it", then you should
> look into some of the ELF header flag stuff that IBM pSeries firmware
> architects seems to love these days, it seems to be the preferred way
> for the OS to tell firmware/hypervisor what it wants.
> 
> There should be no need to introduce yet another interface for this. There
> are plenty of them already.
> 

I wish the part where I wrote 'I don't think we need to worry about it
so much now' didn't get cut from the discussion, since I am in agreement
with you to try to avoid some new mechanisms...

-Geoff