Re: Looking for links: Why Linux Doesn't Page Kernel Memory?

From: Rik van Riel (riel@conectiva.com.br)
Date: Sat Jul 27 2002 - 11:56:40 EST


On Sat, 27 Jul 2002, David Woodhouse wrote:
> alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk said:
> > Memory is relatively cheap, and the complexity of such a paging
> > kernel is huge (you have to pin down disk driver and I/O paths for
> > example). Linux prefers to try to keep simple debuggable approaches to
> > things.
>
> You could do it. Start with kmalloc_pageable ...

Funny things are bound to happen when code gets preempted because
of page faults...

> It's debatable what kind of benefit it would give you over and above
> just fixing specific cases like page tables, though.

In all extreme cases you'll find that 90% of kernel memory is
tied up in just a few data structures.

Making a generic infrastructure just to deal with these specific
cases is almost certainly overkill.

regards,

Rik

-- 
Bravely reimplemented by the knights who say "NIH".

http://www.surriel.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com/

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