Re: [PATCH v3 00/13] Virtually mapped stacks with guard pages (x86, core)

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Tue Jun 21 2016 - 13:18:09 EST


On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 9:45 AM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> So I'm leaning toward fewer cache entries per cpu, maybe just one.
> I'm all for making it a bit faster, but I think we should weigh that
> against increasing memory usage too much and thus scaring away the
> embedded folks.

I don't think the embedded folks will be scared by a per-cpu cache, if
it's just one or two entries. And I really do think that even just
one or two entries will indeed catch a lot of the cases.

And yes, fork+execve() is too damn expensive in page table build-up
and tear-down. I'm not sure why bash doesn't do vfork+exec for when it
has to wait for the process anyway, but it doesn't seem to do that.

Linus