[PATCH v2 1/6] xen: Always calculate max_cpus value

[Daniel Kiper]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 03:39:29PM +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >>> On 10.08.12 at 15:25, Daniel Kiper <daniel.kiper at oracle.com> wrote:
> > max_cpus is not available since 20374 changeset (Miscellaneous data
> > placement adjustments). It was moved to __initdata section. This section
> > is freed after Xen initialization. Assume that max_cpus is always
> > equal to XEN_HYPER_SIZE(cpumask_t) * 8.
>
> Just to repeat my response to the original version of this patch,
> which I don't recall having got any answer from you:
>
> "Using nr_cpu_ids, when available, would seem a better fit. And
>  I don't see why, on dumps from old hypervisors, you wouldn't
>  want to continue using max_cpus. Oh, wait, I see - you would
>  have to be able to tell whether it actually sits in .init.data, which
>  might not be strait forward."

As I promised earlier I thought about that. The simplest way
to do that is to check in which section max_cpus resides. There
is some instrumentation in crash tool to do that. However, sadly
it does not differentiate between .data and .init.data section.
I could write something from scratch which could do that but
I think it could have larger costs then potential gains.
Let's leave it as is now. Current approximation is not so bad.
However, if any opportunity appears (some functions could
differentiate between .data and .init.data section) then
I could fix this.

Sorry, I should attach above description to original message.

Daniel