Mapping of ZONE_HIGHMEM in kernel address space in 32bit x86

[Sergio Andrés Gómez del Real]

I've got some questions regarding this linear to physical address
mapping on x86 architecture; I'm not sure I've grassped the whole
thing.
Before asking, I'd like to be sure I understand some basic things about this:

1. Addresses within the kernel are linked to start at 0xC0000000 so,
that the kernel issues linear addresses starting at gigabyte 3 is
really accomplished at link time through a linker directive.
2. User applications are linked to addresses somewhere at 0x00000000-0xBFFFFFFF.
3. There is a data structure (struct page), immediately following the
kernel image in physical memory. It describes all page frames
available.
4. The kernel creates its own page-relative structures. It maps linear
addresses starting at 0xC0000000 linearly starting at physical address
0x00000000. So, accessing this linear space is equivalent to accessing
physical memory, because the map is linear and the conversion between
linear to physical address is always a constant (0xC0000000)·
5. The last part of the kernel's linear address space is reserved for
temporarily mapping high memory (is this strictly true?).

If all of this is true, here are my questions:

1. The problem of accessing high memory is EXCLUSIVE to the kernel,
right? It doesn't affect user-space applications, because it's linear
address, 0x00000000-0xBFFFFFFF, can be mapped anywhere in physical
memory, by just writing the high-memory address to the appropiate page
tables. Is this right?
2. When user applications allocates memory, the kernel must allocate
virtual memory and physical memory, right? For example, the kernel
would first allocate some linear address from the processes' address
space, and then find some suitable page frames where to map this
linear address. It would just write to the appropiate page tables;
specifically, the page frames can come from low memory or high memory,
i.e the high memory problem does not affect user-space physical memory
allocations. Is this entirely correct?
3. Is physical memory allocated to user-space generally satisfied from
high memory?
4. When does the kernel allocate pages from high memory to itself?

Thanks in advance to anyone who replies.

On 5/13/13, Prabhu nath <gprabhunath at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this is a question that popped up to your mind arbitrarily or do you
> have a specific system at hand which triggered you to ponder over the
> design of the kernel ? I felt the answer to this question is not straight
> forward but is multi faceted and to be discussed in a specific context.
>
>
> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:02 AM, Paul Davies C
> <pauldaviesc at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> In a system with 3:1 split, the ZONE_NORMAL with a size of 896MB is
>> permanently mapped to the kernel address space.This leaves a 128MB free
>> space in the Kernel address space and according to my understanding, the
>> ZONE_HIGHMEM pages are mapped temporarily to this 128MB part. If the
>> system
>> actually had a 4GB physical memory you will be mapping(not smultaneously)
>> the HIHGMEM part- which is roughly 3.2GB - to this 128MB part. If that
>> was
>> the case Kernel would have to frequently access HIHGMEM which implicates
>> a
>> frequent change in temporaty mapping and that in my view is a penalty. So
>> what was the reason why ZONE_NORMAL fixed at 896MB and not something
>> really
>> lower?
>>
>> --
>> *Regards,*
>> *Paul Davies C*
>> vivafoss.blogspot.com
>>
>>
> --
> Regards,
> Prabhunath G
> Linux Trainer
> Bangalore
>