Re: [RFC PATCH 30/35] Add generic_page_range() function

From: Keir Fraser
Date: Wed Mar 22 2006 - 09:30:35 EST



On 22 Mar 2006, at 11:21, Nick Piggin wrote:

Couple of issues with the current code though:

firstly, the name.

Okay, can you suggest a better one? That's the best I could come up with that wasn't long winded. :-)

secondly, I think you confuse our (confusing) terminology: the page
that holds pte_ts is not the pte_page, the pte_page is the page that
a pte points to

What should we call it? Essentially we want to be able to get the physical address of a PTE in some cases, and passing struct page pointer seemed the best way to be able to derive that. I can rename it to something else vaguely plausible if the only problem is the semantic clash with Linux's idiomatic use of pte_page.

lastly, you don't allow any control over the type of pages that are
walked: this could well be unusably slow for some cases. At least
you should proably design the interface so we can iterate over
present, not present, all, etc so it becomes widely usable. Normally
I'd say to wait until users come up but in this case the function
isn't a speed demon anyway, and you also don't want to give people
any excuses not to use it.

You mean iterate only over PTEs that are already present, or only those that were *not* previously present, or all (present and non-present)? Is that really useful? If so then yes, it's not hard to add.

Thanks,
Keir

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