IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-10:

<braunr> antrik: about our physical memory limitations, i told you some
  time ago that part of it was due to the linux drivers
<braunr> and i mentioned the paper concerning the integration of the linux
  drivers written at the time
<braunr> it does indeed tell that mach, which used the common 3G->4G area
  for the kernel space had to be adapted
<braunr> because linux used segmentation so that kernel addresses matched
  physical addresses
<braunr> and it looks like some (many) drivers require that
<braunr> our current gnumach actually does this (which i found surprising
  when i first found it)
<braunr> and i believe the easy solution to exceed this limitation is to
  use a strategy similar to what linux still does on i386
<braunr> some highmem support
<braunr> we could alter the vm_resident module so that, by default, it
  still looks for pages in the low 0-800 (or 0-1800 on debian patched
  kernels) area
<braunr> but for everything else than the kernel, e.g. all user processes
<braunr> we could use a flag or a specialized function that would first
  look in the highmem pool for available physical pages to map
<braunr> the only thing i'm not yet sure of is about user/kernel transfers
<braunr> if virtual addresses and copies are always cleanly done, then it's
  ok
<braunr> and i really hope our linux drivers do so :)
<braunr> (i mean ,the glue code ofc)

2011-10-23:

<youpi> braunr: I believe, like Linus, that highmem support is a nightmare
<antrik> braunr: uhm... the drivers want virtual addressses to match
  physical ones? I guess that means switching address spaces before any
  driver code is executed?...