Re: [PATCH] kern/efi/mm: Double the default heap size

[Daniel Axtens]

Hi Hector,

Thanks for your patch and for taking the trouble to put it together.

> GRUB is already running out of memory on Apple M1 systems, causing
> graphics init to fail, as of the latest Git changes. Since dynamic
> growing of the heap isn't done yet, double the default heap size for
> now.

Huh, weird - those changes have landed in git, see commit 887f98f0db43
("mm: Allow dynamically requesting additional memory regions") for the
overarching support and commit 1df2934822df ("kern/efi/mm: Implement
runtime addition of pages"). It's not done on PowerPC, but if you're in
EFI-land then it should complete.

The only reason I can think of off the top of my head where you would be
having issues that your patch fixes is if we somehow need more memory to
even get to the point where we can ask firmware for more memory. I
suppose that's within the realm of possibility.

I f my maths are right, this bumps up the initial allocation from 1M to
2M. I think your experience tends to disprove the hypothesis that we
could get away with a very small initial allocation (which was the
thinking when the initial dynamic allocation patch set went in), so I'm
wondering if we should take this opportunity to allocate 16M or 32M or
something. My powerpc proposal kept the initial allocation at 32MB, I
think that's probably sane for EFI too?

Patrick, EFI is much more your area than it is mine, what do you think?

Kind regards,
Daniel

>
> Signed-off-by: Hector Martin <marcan@marcan.st>
> ---
>  grub-core/kern/efi/mm.c | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/grub-core/kern/efi/mm.c b/grub-core/kern/efi/mm.c
> index d290c9a76270..377d8d3a1c1b 100644
> --- a/grub-core/kern/efi/mm.c
> +++ b/grub-core/kern/efi/mm.c
> @@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
>  #define MEMORY_MAP_SIZE      0x3000
>  
>  /* The default heap size for GRUB itself in bytes.  */
> -#define DEFAULT_HEAP_SIZE    0x100000
> +#define DEFAULT_HEAP_SIZE    0x200000
>  
>  static void *finish_mmap_buf = 0;
>  static grub_efi_uintn_t finish_mmap_size = 0;
> -- 
> 2.35.1
>
>
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