Re: 2.5.69-70 ide-cd to guarantee fault-free CD/DVD burning experience?

[Andy Polyakov]

> > ... I noticed that DMA is never engaged
> > on that buffer allocated with kmalloc. The question is if it's
> > intentional? If answer is yes, then the case is dismissed. If not, then
> > it should be looked into...
> 
> Depends on the lower level driver, for ide-cd yes kmalloc'ed data will
> not be dma'ed to. We require a valid bio setup for that, usually the bio
> mapping will fail exactly because the length/alignment isn't correct for
> ide-cd.
> 
> > ... it might be appropriate to retry
> > bio_map_user on buffer. I'm actually stepping out of my competence
> > domains here...
> 
> It's usually not worth it. If the buffer is < 4 bytes, we don't dma. Big
> deal.

Well, I'm concerned rather about cases when user buffer ends up in non
DMA-able memory than small or misaligned buffers. I mean those who have
system with loads of RAM didn't do anything wrong, yet they get
"punished." But I'm not actually insisting! Just saying that it *might*
be worth reconsidering "ide-cd won't do dma without bio setup" clause or
retry bio_map_user on kalloc-ed buffer. At least for transfers not
smaller than say 2K:-)

Cheers. A.