Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Fri, 20 Aug 2004 16:18:25 +0300 | From | Ville Herva <> | Subject | Re: 2.6.8.1-mm2 breaks vmware |
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On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 03:51:42AM -0700, you [Andrew Morton] wrote: > Ville Herva <vherva@viasys.com> wrote: > > > > Andrew, I know you are not interested in closed source vmware, I'm just > > blatantly Cc'ing you in case you would have some suggestion of the top of > > your head. As stuff slowly trickles from -mm to mainline, this could > > eventually end up biting more people. > > > > In short, there are two (afaict) separate problem: > > > > (1) vmmon.ko gives this: > > > > vmmon: Your kernel is br0ken. get_user_pages(current, current->mm, b7dd1000, 1, 1, 0, &page, NULL) returned -14. > > vmmon: I'll try accessing page tables directly, but you should know that your > > vmmon: kernel is br0ken and you should uninstall all additional patches you > > vmmon: have installed! > > vmmon: FYI, copy_from_user(b7dd1000) returns 0 (if not 0 maybe your kernel is not br0ken) > > > > (2) vmware fails to start any guest os, telling it cannot allocate memory: > > > > VMX|[msg.msg.noMem] Cannot allocate memory. > > > > > > (1) happened with 2.6.6-mm4 and with 2.6.8.1-mm2. > > (2) only happened with 2.6.8.1-mm2 (with 2.6.6-mm4 vmware worked despite > > the warning.) > > Try -mm3, please. It'll have the same problem.
I can try. I'm a bit confused what I should learn from trying -mm3 -- it doesn't have any big changes on this area, right?
> > So I backed out these patches from 2.6.8.1-mm2: > > > > flexible-mmap-2.6.7-mm3-A8.patch > > flex-mmap-for-ppc64.patch > > flex-mmap-for-s390x.patch > > sysctl-tunable-for-flexmmap.patch > > These have all been lumped together in mm3. > > Try setting /proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout to 1
As I said, backing these out did not cure (2) (vmware failing to allocate memory). And as Arjan said, flex-mmap is in Fedora kernels, and they have no problems.
Also, flex-mmap has been introduced after 2.6.6-mm4, right? That would mean it can't explain (1) ("get_user_pages() returns -EFAULT even though copy_from_user() return 0")
That would mean (1) is cured by reversing get_user_pages-latency-fix.patch, increase-mlock-limit-to-32k.patch or mlock-as-user-for-268-rc2-mm2.patch.
> > get_user_pages-latency-fix.patch > > It won't be this. > > > increase-mlock-limit-to-32k.patch > > mlock-as-user-for-268-rc2-mm2.patch > > Unlikely to be these.
But what can explain (1), then? flex-mmap is not in 2.6.6-mm4, still it gives that warning.
I just noticed I had missed get_user_pages-handle-VM_IO.patch - I'll try backing that out first. I'll report back if I find anything interesting with different patch mixtures.
> > After this, problem (1) went away for 2.6.8.1-mm2, but problem (2) remained. > > Try setting /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory to 1
Forgot to tell: problem (2) (vmware failing to allocate memory) is consistent with 2.6.8.1-mm2 even when I try to configure the guest os to use 8MB memory. 128MB or 256MB is no problem with 2.6.8.1 mainline and it as /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory set to 0. (I have 512MB of RAM and 512MB of swap.)
> Maybe Peter could take a look sometime?
I already harrashed him, but I couldn't tell off the top of his head.
> > Could get_user_pages-latency-fix.patch explain (1)? My kernel expertise is > > not sufficient to tell. > > Doubtful.
Ok.
-- v --
v@iki.fi
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