mm: add a basic debugging framework for memory initialisation

Boot initialisation is very complex, with significant numbers of
architecture-specific routines, hooks and code ordering.  While significant
amounts of the initialisation is architecture-independent, it trusts the data
received from the architecture layer.  This is a mistake, and has resulted in
a number of difficult-to-diagnose bugs.

This patchset adds some validation and tracing to memory initialisation.  It
also introduces a few basic defensive measures.  The validation code can be
explicitly disabled for embedded systems.

This patch:

Add additional debugging and verification code for memory initialisation.

Once enabled, the verification checks are always run and when required
additional debugging information may be outputted via a mminit_loglevel=
command-line parameter.

The verification code is placed in a new file mm/mm_init.c.  Ideally other mm
initialisation code will be moved here over time.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 18 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/mm/mm_init.c b/mm/mm_init.c
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c01d8df
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mm/mm_init.c
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+/*
+ * mm_init.c - Memory initialisation verification and debugging
+ *
+ * Copyright 2008 IBM Corporation, 2008
+ * Author Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
+ *
+ */
+#include <linux/kernel.h>
+#include <linux/init.h>
+
+int __meminitdata mminit_loglevel;
+
+static __init int set_mminit_loglevel(char *str)
+{
+	get_option(&str, &mminit_loglevel);
+	return 0;
+}
+early_param("mminit_loglevel", set_mminit_loglevel);