Re: SLUB: Return ZERO_SIZE_PTR for kmalloc(0)

From: Christoph Lameter
Date: Mon Jun 04 2007 - 18:39:20 EST


On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Pekka Enberg wrote:

> Christoph Lameter wrote:
> > That is another patchset. See
> > http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&w=2&r=1&s=DEVELKERNEL&q=b
>
> Oh my, I am totally confused now.
>
> First you fix kmalloc(0) to be legal and safe. And then you want to
> DEVEL_WARN_ON_ONCE when size is zero so people can fix their code?
>
> I don't get it.

Sorry complex situation. Andrew wants the warnings, Linus wants the
ZERO_SIZE_PTR. Not sure where we are going here.

> I thought we wanted to support kmalloc(0) so that as long as you don't
> dereference the pointer, it's all legal and good. Right? So we obviously
> should shut up the WARN_ON because if you do oops, you can clearly see that it
> happened at ZERO_SIZE_PTR and have a nice stack trace anyway...

Well so far we agreed to keep the warnings in at least till release data
and I have not heard differently yet.

> Btw, if I am again missing something totally obvious, could you please be so
> kind to send me a batch of the same pills that the smart people take. I am all
> out.

Heheheh.... Mind boogling isnt it? Patch duplicity....

Seriously: Andrew/Linus could you make up your mind which way we are
going here?

I'd say lets drop the DEVELKERNEL stuff and the warnings and go with
ZERO_SIZE_PTR. The DEVELKERNEL patch has the danger that subtle changes
occur at release time that we have not anticipated.

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