Re: [patch?] Re: Do ramdisk exec's map direct to buffer cache?

From: Mike Galbraith (mikeg@weiden.de)
Date: Mon Jul 31 2000 - 15:18:05 EST


On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, 30 Jul 2000, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> >
> > I keep running into a deadlock with it looping forever trying to
> > free memory, triggered by blocking in getblk->refill_freelist->..
> > try_to_free_buffers->sync_page_buffers->zzzzz (kflushd runs forever).
> >
> > The below seems to cure it. Without this, I can lock my box without
> > much effort. I beat on this pretty hard with no ill effects noted.
>
> This is exactly the kind of patch that the loopback device has always
> needed, and is exactly the reason why I would prefer to kill loopback as
> soon as possible.

It need serious rewriting, but I don't know how to make it play nice :(

> Either loopback is a block device driver, or it isn't. If it is, then it

It sure isn't one lately.

> has absolutely no reason to start messing with fs/buffers.c and add
> special case logic for itself. And if it isn't, then the whole point of
> loopback is gone.

nod

> I'm inclined to mark loopback DANGEROUS because there apparently still
> isn't a maintainer for it. And the next person who suggests using it
> instead of a real filesystem (ramfs, cramfs, JFFS) should be forced to
> actually make it work right first!

<g> Mark it dangerous. It can be very dangerous indeed, I assure you :)

        -Mike

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