Re: [PATCH 2.3.48] initrd fix (Mike Galbraith)

From: Jeff Garzik (jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com)
Date: Sun Feb 27 2000 - 19:18:54 EST


Russell King wrote:
>
> Alan Cox writes:
> > > Is there any reason (apart from making vmlinux and kernel binary images larger)
> > > for explicitly initialising variables with 0 when they will be placed in the
> > > BSS anyway?
> >
> > Long long ago (before 1.0) the kernel didnt zero the BSS. Some legacy of
> > that survives in old assignments - otherwise none
>
> Oh, I remember those kernels ;)
>
> However, I noticed that the patch was introducing some extra explicit zero
> initialisations.

Here is one from my todo list...

Run 'nm vmlinux' with the sort-by-size argument. Guess what the biggest
objects in the entire kernel are? The dentry and inode hash table base
arrays...

Unless there is hidden stuff, a nice fix for this would be to make their
allocation dynamic at the beginning of fs_init() or somesuch.

-- 
Jeff Garzik              | "Are you the police?"
Building 1024            | 
MandrakeSoft, Inc.       | "No ma'am.  We're musicians."

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