of the various ad-hoc schemes.
2) When bringing in UPAGES, the pmap code needs to do another vm_page_lookup.
3) When appropriate, set the PG_A or PG_M bits a-priori to both avoid some
processor errata, and to minimize redundant processor updating of page
tables.
4) Modify pmap_protect so that it can only remove permissions (as it
originally supported.) The additional capability is not needed.
5) Streamline read-only to read-write page mappings.
6) For pmap_copy_page, don't enable write mapping for source page.
7) Correct and clean-up pmap_incore.
8) Cluster initial kern_exec pagin.
9) Removal of some minor lint from kern_malloc.
10) Correct some ioopt code.
11) Remove some dead code from the MI swapout routine.
12) Correct vm_object_deallocate (to remove backing_object ref.)
13) Fix dead object handling, that had problems under heavy memory load.
14) Add minor vm_page_lookup improvements.
15) Some pages are not in objects, and make sure that the vm_page.c can
properly support such pages.
16) Add some more page deficit handling.
17) Some minor code readability improvements.
MUST be PG_BUSY. It is bogus to free a page that isn't busy,
because it is in a state of being "unavailable" when being
freed. The additional advantage is that the page_remove code
has a better cross-check that the page should be busy and
unavailable for other use. There were some minor problems
with the collapse code, and this plugs those subtile "holes."
Also, the vfs_bio code wasn't checking correctly for PG_BUSY
pages. I am going to develop a more consistant scheme for
grabbing pages, busy or otherwise. For now, we are stuck
with the current morass.
1) Start using TSM.
Struct procs continue to point to upages structure, after being freed.
Struct vmspace continues to point to pte object and kva space for kstack.
u_map is now superfluous.
2) vm_map's don't need to be reference counted. They always exist either
in the kernel or in a vmspace. The vmspaces are managed by reference
counts.
3) Remove the "wired" vm_map nonsense.
4) No need to keep a cache of kernel stack kva's.
5) Get rid of strange looking ++var, and change to var++.
6) Change more data structures to use our "zone" allocator. Added
struct proc, struct vmspace and struct vnode. This saves a significant
amount of kva space and physical memory. Additionally, this enables
TSM for the zone managed memory.
7) Keep ioopt disabled for now.
8) Remove the now bogus "single use" map concept.
9) Use generation counts or id's for data structures residing in TSM, where
it allows us to avoid unneeded restart overhead during traversals, where
blocking might occur.
10) Account better for memory deficits, so the pageout daemon will be able
to make enough memory available (experimental.)
11) Fix some vnode locking problems. (From Tor, I think.)
12) Add a check in ufs_lookup, to avoid lots of unneeded calls to bcmp.
(experimental.)
13) Significantly shrink, cleanup, and make slightly faster the vm_fault.c
code. Use generation counts, get rid of unneded collpase operations,
and clean up the cluster code.
14) Make vm_zone more suitable for TSM.
This commit is partially as a result of discussions and contributions from
other people, including DG, Tor Egge, PHK, and probably others that I
have forgotten to attribute (so let me know, if I forgot.)
This is not the infamous, final cleanup of the vnode stuff, but a necessary
step. Vnode mgmt should be correct, but things might still change, and
there is still some missing stuff (like ioopt, and physical backing of
non-merged cache files, debugging of layering concepts.)
config option in pmap. Fix a problem with faulting in pages. Clean-up
some loose ends in swap pager memory management.
The system should be much more stable, but all subtile bugs aren't fixed yet.
Fix the UIO optimization code.
Fix an assumption in vm_map_insert regarding allocation of swap pagers.
Fix an spl problem in the collapse handling in vm_object_deallocate.
When pages are freed from vnode objects, and the criteria for putting
the associated vnode onto the free list is reached, either put the
vnode onto the list, or put it onto an interrupt safe version of the
list, for further transfer onto the actual free list.
Some minor syntax changes changing pre-decs, pre-incs to post versions.
Remove a bogus timeout (that I added for debugging) from vn_lock.
PHK will likely still have problems with the vnode list management, and
so do I, but it is better than it was.
of vnodes and objects. There are some metadata performance improvements
that come along with this. There are also a few prototypes added when
the need is noticed. Changes include:
1) Cleaning up vref, vget.
2) Removal of the object cache.
3) Nuke vnode_pager_uncache and friends, because they aren't needed anymore.
4) Correct some missing LK_RETRY's in vn_lock.
5) Correct the page range in the code for msync.
Be gentle, and please give me feedback asap.
the pageout daemon wasn't always being waken up appropriately when the
(cache + free) queues were depleted.
Submitted by: David S. Miller <davem@jenolan.rutgers.edu>
changes, so don't expect to be able to run the kernel as-is (very well)
without the appropriate Lite/2 userland changes.
The system boots and can mount UFS filesystems.
Untested: ext2fs, msdosfs, NFS
Known problems: Incorrect Berkeley ID strings in some files.
Mount_std mounts will not work until the getfsent
library routine is changed.
Reviewed by: various people
Submitted by: Jeffery Hsu <hsu@freebsd.org>
This will make a number of things easier in the future, as well as (finally!)
avoiding the Id-smashing problem which has plagued developers for so long.
Boy, I'm glad we're not using sup anymore. This update would have been
insane otherwise.
problem of allocating contiguous buffer memory in general, but
make it much more likely to work at boot-up time. The best
chance for an LKM-type load of a sound driver is immediately
after the mount of the root filesystem.
This appears to work for a 64K allocation on an 8MB system.
`show vmopag', `show page' and `show pageq'. Moved all vm ddb stuff
to the ends of the vm source files.
Changed printf() to db_printf(), `indent' to db_indent, and iprintf()
to db_iprintf() in ddb commands. Moved db_indent and db_iprintf()
from vm to ddb.
vm_page.c:
Don't use __pure. Staticized.
db_output.c:
Reduced page width from 80 to 79 to inhibit double spacing for long
lines (there are still some problems if words are printed across
column 79).
The default level works with minimal overhead, but one can also enable
full, efficient use of a 512K cache. (Parameters can be generated
to support arbitrary cache sizes also.)
problem with the 'shell scripts' was found, but there was a 'strange'
problem found with a 486 laptop that we could not find. This commit
backs the code back to 25-jul, and will be re-entered after the snapshot
in smaller (more easily tested) chunks.
performance issues.
1) The pmap module has had too many inlines, and so the
object file is simply bigger than it needs to be.
Some common code is also merged into subroutines.
2) Removal of some *evil* PHYS_TO_VM_PAGE macro calls.
Unfortunately, a few have needed to be added also.
The removal caused the need for more vm_page_lookups.
I added lookup hints to minimize the need for the
page table lookup operations.
3) Removal of some bogus performance improvements, that
mostly made the code more complex (tracking individual
page table page updates unnecessarily). Those improvements
actually hurt 386 processors perf (not that people who
worry about perf use 386 processors anymore :-)).
4) Changed pv queue manipulations/structures to be TAILQ's.
5) The pv queue code has had some performance problems since
day one. Some significant scalability issues are resolved
by threading the pv entries from the pmap AND the physical
address instead of just the physical address. This makes
certain pmap operations run much faster. This does
not affect most micro-benchmarks, but should help loaded system
performance *significantly*. DG helped and came up with most
of the solution for this one.
6) Most if not all pmap bit operations follow the pattern:
pmap_test_bit();
pmap_clear_bit();
That made for twice the necessary pv list traversal. The
pmap interface now supports only pmap_tc_bit type operations:
pmap_[test/clear]_modified, pmap_[test/clear]_referenced.
Additionally, the modified routine now takes a vm_page_t arg
instead of a phys address. This eliminates a PHYS_TO_VM_PAGE
operation.
7) Several rewrites of routines that contain redundant code to
use common routines, so that there is a greater likelihood of
keeping the cache footprint smaller.
Re-enables the RSS limiting, and the routine is now tail-recursive,
making it much more safe (eliminates the possiblity of kernel stack
overflow.) Also, the RSS limiting is a little more intelligent about
finding the likely objects that are pushing the process over the limit.
Added some sysctls that help with VM system tuning.
New sysctl features:
1) Enable/disable lru pageout algorithm.
vm.pageout_algorithm = 0, default algorithm that works
well, especially using X windows and heavy
memory loading. Can have adverse effects,
sometimes slowing down program loading.
vm.pageout_algorithm = 1, close to true LRU. Works much
better than clock, etc. Does not work as well as
the default algorithm in general. Certain memory
"malloc" type benchmarks work a little better with
this setting.
Please give me feedback on the performance results
associated with these.
2) Enable/disable swapping.
vm.swapping_enabled = 1, default.
vm.swapping_enabled = 0, useful for cases where swapping
degrades performance.
The config option "NO_SWAPPING" is still operative, and
takes precedence over the sysctl. If "NO_SWAPPING" is
specified, the sysctl still exists, but "vm.swapping_enabled"
is hard-wired to "0".
Each of these can be changed "on the fly."
1) Make it much less likely to miss a wakeup in vm_page_free_wakeup
2) Create a new entry point into pmap: pmap_ts_referenced, eliminates
the need to scan the pv lists twice in many cases. Perhaps there
is alot more to do here to work on minimizing pv list manipulation
3) Minor improvements to vm_pageout including the use of pmap_ts_ref.
4) Major changes and code improvement to pmap. This code has had
several serious bugs in page table page manipulation. In order
to simplify the problem, and hopefully solve it for once and all,
page table pages are no longer "managed" with the pv list stuff.
Page table pages are only (mapped and held/wired) or
(free and unused) now. Page table pages are never inactive,
active or cached. These changes have probably fixed the
hold count problems, but if they haven't, then the code is
simpler anyway for future bugfixing.
5) The pmap code has been sorely in need of re-organization, and I
have taken a first (of probably many) steps. Please tell me
if you have any ideas.
1) Remove potential race conditions on waking up in vm_page_free_wakeup
by making sure that it is at splvm().
2) Fix another bug in vm_map_simplify_entry.
3) Be more complete about converting from default to swap pager
when an object grows to be large enough that there can be
a problem with data structure allocation under low memory
conditions.
4) Make some madvise code more efficient.
5) Added some comments.
queue in vm_fault.
Move the PG_BUSY in vm_fault to the correct place.
Remove redundant/unnecessary code in pmap.c.
Properly block on rundown of page table pages, if they are busy.
I think that the VM system is in pretty good shape now, and the following
individuals (among others, in no particular order) have helped with this
recent bunch of bugs, thanks! If I left anyone out, I apologize!
Stephen McKay, Stephen Hocking, Eric J. Chet, Dan O'Brien, James Raynard,
Marc Fournier.
some problems with the page-table page management code, since it can't
deal with the notion of page-table pages being paged out or in transit.
Also, clean up some stylistic issues per some suggestions from
Stephen McKay.
queue corruption problems, and to apply Gary Palmer's code cleanups.
David Greenman helped with these problems also. There is still
a hang problem using X in small memory machines.
contributions or ideas from Stephen McKay <syssgm@devetir.qld.gov.au>,
Alan Cox <alc@cs.rice.edu>, David Greenman <davidg@freebsd.org> and me:
More usage of the TAILQ macros. Additional minor fix to queue.h.
Performance enhancements to the pageout daemon.
Addition of a wait in the case that the pageout daemon
has to run immediately.
Slightly modify the pageout algorithm.
Significant revamp of the pmap/fork code:
1) PTE's and UPAGES's are NO LONGER in the process's map.
2) PTE's and UPAGES's reside in their own objects.
3) TOTAL elimination of recursive page table pagefaults.
4) The page directory now resides in the PTE object.
5) Implemented pmap_copy, thereby speeding up fork time.
6) Changed the pv entries so that the head is a pointer
and not an entire entry.
7) Significant cleanup of pmap_protect, and pmap_remove.
8) Removed significant amounts of machine dependent
fork code from vm_glue. Pushed much of that code into
the machine dependent pmap module.
9) Support more completely the reuse of already zeroed
pages (Page table pages and page directories) as being
already zeroed.
Performance and code cleanups in vm_map:
1) Improved and simplified allocation of map entries.
2) Improved vm_map_copy code.
3) Corrected some minor problems in the simplify code.
Implemented splvm (combo of splbio and splimp.) The VM code now
seldom uses splhigh.
Improved the speed of and simplified kmem_malloc.
Minor mod to vm_fault to avoid using pre-zeroed pages in the case
of objects with backing objects along with the already
existant condition of having a vnode. (If there is a backing
object, there will likely be a COW... With a COW, it isn't
necessary to start with a pre-zeroed page.)
Minor reorg of source to perhaps improve locality of ref.
way to avoid crossing a 64K DMA boundary was to specify an alignment
greater than the size even when the alignment didn't matter, and for
sizes larger than a page, this reduced the chance of finding enough
contiguous pages. E.g., allocations of 8K not crossing a 64K boundary
previously had to be allocated on 8K boundaries; now they can be
allocated on any 4K boundary except (64 * n + 60)K.
Fixed bugs in vm_alloc_page_contig():
- the last page wasn't allocated for sizes smaller than a page.
- failures of kmem_alloc_pageable() weren't handled.
Mutated vm_page_alloc_contig() to create a more convenient interface
named contigmalloc(). This is the same as the one in 1.1.5 except
it has `low' and `high' args, and the `alignment' and `boundary'
args are multipliers instead of masks.
Speed up for vfs_bio -- addition of a routine bqrelse to greatly diminish
overhead for merged cache.
Efficiency improvement for vfs_cluster. It used to do alot of redundant
calls to cluster_rbuild.
Correct the ordering for vrele of .text and release of credentials.
Use the selective tlb update for 486/586/P6.
Numerous fixes to the size of objects allocated for files. Additionally,
fixes in the various pagers.
Fixes for proper positioning of vnode_pager_setsize in msdosfs and ext2fs.
Fixes in the swap pager for exhausted resources. The pageout code
will not as readily thrash.
Change the page queue flags (PG_ACTIVE, PG_INACTIVE, PG_FREE, PG_CACHE) into
page queue indices (PQ_ACTIVE, PQ_INACTIVE, PQ_FREE, PQ_CACHE),
thereby improving efficiency of several routines.
Eliminate even more unnecessary vm_page_protect operations.
Significantly speed up process forks.
Make vm_object_page_clean more efficient, thereby eliminating the pause
that happens every 30seconds.
Make sequential clustered writes B_ASYNC instead of B_DELWRI even in the
case of filesystems mounted async.
Fix a panic with busy pages when write clustering is done for non-VMIO
buffers.
Staticized some functions.
__purified some functions. Some functions were bogusly declared as
returning `const'. This hasn't done anything since gcc-2.5. For
later versions of gcc, the equivalent is __attribute__((const)) at
the end of function declarations.
proc or any VM system structure will have to be rebuilt!!!
Much needed overhaul of the VM system. Included in this first round of
changes:
1) Improved pager interfaces: init, alloc, dealloc, getpages, putpages,
haspage, and sync operations are supported. The haspage interface now
provides information about clusterability. All pager routines now take
struct vm_object's instead of "pagers".
2) Improved data structures. In the previous paradigm, there is constant
confusion caused by pagers being both a data structure ("allocate a
pager") and a collection of routines. The idea of a pager structure has
escentially been eliminated. Objects now have types, and this type is
used to index the appropriate pager. In most cases, items in the pager
structure were duplicated in the object data structure and thus were
unnecessary. In the few cases that remained, a un_pager structure union
was created in the object to contain these items.
3) Because of the cleanup of #1 & #2, a lot of unnecessary layering can now
be removed. For instance, vm_object_enter(), vm_object_lookup(),
vm_object_remove(), and the associated object hash list were some of the
things that were removed.
4) simple_lock's removed. Discussion with several people reveals that the
SMP locking primitives used in the VM system aren't likely the mechanism
that we'll be adopting. Even if it were, the locking that was in the code
was very inadequate and would have to be mostly re-done anyway. The
locking in a uni-processor kernel was a no-op but went a long way toward
making the code difficult to read and debug.
5) Places that attempted to kludge-up the fact that we don't have kernel
thread support have been fixed to reflect the reality that we are really
dealing with processes, not threads. The VM system didn't have complete
thread support, so the comments and mis-named routines were just wrong.
We now use tsleep and wakeup directly in the lock routines, for instance.
6) Where appropriate, the pagers have been improved, especially in the
pager_alloc routines. Most of the pager_allocs have been rewritten and
are now faster and easier to maintain.
7) The pagedaemon pageout clustering algorithm has been rewritten and
now tries harder to output an even number of pages before and after
the requested page. This is sort of the reverse of the ideal pagein
algorithm and should provide better overall performance.
8) Unnecessary (incorrect) casts to caddr_t in calls to tsleep & wakeup
have been removed. Some other unnecessary casts have also been removed.
9) Some almost useless debugging code removed.
10) Terminology of shadow objects vs. backing objects straightened out.
The fact that the vm_object data structure escentially had this
backwards really confused things. The use of "shadow" and "backing
object" throughout the code is now internally consistent and correct
in the Mach terminology.
11) Several minor bug fixes, including one in the vm daemon that caused
0 RSS objects to not get purged as intended.
12) A "default pager" has now been created which cleans up the transition
of objects to the "swap" type. The previous checks throughout the code
for swp->pg_data != NULL were really ugly. This change also provides
the rudiments for future backing of "anonymous" memory by something
other than the swap pager (via the vnode pager, for example), and it
allows the decision about which of these pagers to use to be made
dynamically (although will need some additional decision code to do
this, of course).
13) (dyson) MAP_COPY has been deprecated and the corresponding "copy
object" code has been removed. MAP_COPY was undocumented and non-
standard. It was furthermore broken in several ways which caused its
behavior to degrade to MAP_PRIVATE. Binaries that use MAP_COPY will
continue to work correctly, but via the slightly different semantics
of MAP_PRIVATE.
14) (dyson) Sharing maps have been removed. It's marginal usefulness in a
threads design can be worked around in other ways. Both #12 and #13
were done to simplify the code and improve readability and maintain-
ability. (As were most all of these changes)
TODO:
1) Rewrite most of the vnode pager to use VOP_GETPAGES/PUTPAGES. Doing
this will reduce the vnode pager to a mere fraction of its current size.
2) Rewrite vm_fault and the swap/vnode pagers to use the clustering
information provided by the new haspage pager interface. This will
substantially reduce the overhead by eliminating a large number of
VOP_BMAP() calls. The VOP_BMAP() filesystem interface should be
improved to provide both a "behind" and "ahead" indication of
contiguousness.
3) Implement the extended features of pager_haspage in swap_pager_haspage().
It currently just says 0 pages ahead/behind.
4) Re-implement the swap device (swstrategy) in a more elegant way, perhaps
via a much more general mechanism that could also be used for disk
striping of regular filesystems.
5) Do something to improve the architecture of vm_object_collapse(). The
fact that it makes calls into the swap pager and knows too much about
how the swap pager operates really bothers me. It also doesn't allow
for collapsing of non-swap pager objects ("unnamed" objects backed by
other pagers).
Fixed remaining known bugs in the buffer IO and VM system.
vfs_bio.c:
Fixed some race conditions and locking bugs. Improved performance
by removing some (now) unnecessary code and fixing some broken
logic.
Fixed process accounting of # of FS outputs.
Properly handle NFS interrupts (B_EINTR).
(various)
Replaced calls to clrbuf() with calls to an optimized routine
called vfs_bio_clrbuf().
(various FS sync)
Sync out modified vnode_pager backed pages.
ffs_vnops.c:
Do two passes: Sync out file data first, then indirect blocks.
vm_fault.c:
Fixed deadly embrace caused by acquiring locks in the wrong order.
vnode_pager.c:
Changed to use buffer I/O system for writing out modified pages. This
should fix the problem with the modification date previous not getting
updated. Also dramatically simplifies the code. Note that this is
going to change in the future and be implemented via VOP_PUTPAGES().
vm_object.c:
Fixed a pile of bugs related to cleaning (vnode) objects. The performance
of vm_object_page_clean() is terrible when dealing with huge objects,
but this will change when we implement a binary tree to keep the object
pages sorted.
vm_pageout.c:
Fixed broken clustering of pageouts. Fixed race conditions and other
lockup style bugs in the scanning of pages. Improved performance.
New functions create - vm_object_pip_wakeup and pagedaemon_wakeup that
are used to reduce the actual number of wakeups.
New function vm_page_protect which is used in conjuction with some new
page flags to reduce the number of calls to pmap_page_protect.
Minor changes to reduce unnecessary spl nesting.
Rewrote vm_page_alloc() to improve readability.
Various other mostly cosmetic changes.
Use request==VM_ALLOC_NORMAL rather than object!=kmem_object in deciding
if the caller is "important" in vm_page_alloc(). Also established a new
low threshold for non-interrupt allocations via cnt.v_interrupt_free_min.
vm_pageout.c:
Various algorithmic cleanup. Some calculations simplified. Initialize
cnt.v_interrupt_free_min to 2 pages.
Submitted by: John Dyson
Fixed long standing bug in freeing swap space during object collapses.
Fixed 'out of space' messages from printing out too often.
Modified to use new kmem_malloc() calling convention.
Implemented an additional stat in the swap pager struct to count the
amount of space allocated to that pager. This may be removed at some
point in the future.
Minimized unnecessary wakeups.
vm_fault.c:
Don't try to collect fault stats on 'swapped' processes - there aren't
any upages to store the stats in.
Changed read-ahead policy (again!).
vm_glue.c:
Be sure to gain a reference to the process's map before swapping.
Be sure to lose it when done.
kern_malloc.c:
Added the ability to specify if allocations are at interrupt time or
are 'safe'; this affects what types of pages can be allocated.
vm_map.c:
Fixed a variety of map lock problems; there's still a lurking bug that
will eventually bite.
vm_object.c:
Explicitly initialize the object fields rather than bzeroing the struct.
Eliminated the 'rcollapse' code and folded it's functionality into the
"real" collapse routine.
Moved an object_unlock() so that the backing_object is protected in
the qcollapse routine.
Make sure nobody fools with the backing_object when we're destroying it.
Added some diagnostic code which can be called from the debugger that
looks through all the internal objects and makes certain that they
all belong to someone.
vm_page.c:
Fixed a rather serious logic bug that would result in random system
crashes. Changed pagedaemon wakeup policy (again!).
vm_pageout.c:
Removed unnecessary page rotations on the inactive queue.
Changed the number of pages to explicitly free to just free_reserved
level.
Submitted by: John Dyson
Added hook for pmap_prefault() and use symbolic constant for new third
argument to vm_page_alloc() (vm_fault.c, various)
Changed the way that upages and page tables are held. (vm_glue.c)
Fixed architectural flaw in allocating pages at interrupt time that was
introduced with the merged cache changes. (vm_page.c, various)
Adjusted some algorithms to acheive better paging performance and to
accomodate the fix for the architectural flaw mentioned above. (vm_pageout.c)
Fixed pbuf handling problem, changed policy on handling read-behind page.
(vnode_pager.c)
Submitted by: John Dyson
much higher filesystem I/O performance, and much better paging performance. It
represents the culmination of over 6 months of R&D.
The majority of the merged VM/cache work is by John Dyson.
The following highlights the most significant changes. Additionally, there are
(mostly minor) changes to the various filesystem modules (nfs, msdosfs, etc) to
support the new VM/buffer scheme.
vfs_bio.c:
Significant rewrite of most of vfs_bio to support the merged VM buffer cache
scheme. The scheme is almost fully compatible with the old filesystem
interface. Significant improvement in the number of opportunities for write
clustering.
vfs_cluster.c, vfs_subr.c
Upgrade and performance enhancements in vfs layer code to support merged
VM/buffer cache. Fixup of vfs_cluster to eliminate the bogus pagemove stuff.
vm_object.c:
Yet more improvements in the collapse code. Elimination of some windows that
can cause list corruption.
vm_pageout.c:
Fixed it, it really works better now. Somehow in 2.0, some "enhancements"
broke the code. This code has been reworked from the ground-up.
vm_fault.c, vm_page.c, pmap.c, vm_object.c
Support for small-block filesystems with merged VM/buffer cache scheme.
pmap.c vm_map.c
Dynamic kernel VM size, now we dont have to pre-allocate excessive numbers of
kernel PTs.
vm_glue.c
Much simpler and more effective swapping code. No more gratuitous swapping.
proc.h
Fixed the problem that the p_lock flag was not being cleared on a fork.
swap_pager.c, vnode_pager.c
Removal of old vfs_bio cruft to support the past pseudo-coherency. Now the
code doesn't need it anymore.
machdep.c
Changes to better support the parameter values for the merged VM/buffer cache
scheme.
machdep.c, kern_exec.c, vm_glue.c
Implemented a seperate submap for temporary exec string space and another one
to contain process upages. This eliminates all map fragmentation problems
that previously existed.
ffs_inode.c, ufs_inode.c, ufs_readwrite.c
Changes for merged VM/buffer cache. Add "bypass" support for sneaking in on
busy buffers.
Submitted by: John Dyson and David Greenman
...(this commit): moved initialization of 'start' to make it more clear
that it is initialized properly (also in vm_page_alloc_contig).
Reviewed by:
Submitted by:
Obtained from:
