Re: [patch-2.3.40-pre6] kzalloc() (ala kmem_zalloc() of SVR4)

From: Horst von Brand (vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl)
Date: Sun Jan 23 2000 - 07:35:44 EST


Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com> said:

[...]

> I proposed something along these lines several months ago, poke around
> for the thread. While I agree with the patch, because it will save me a
> few lines of code here and there, an idea that came out of the previous
> discussion is also worth considering -- zeroing pages during system idle
> time, and then handing those out from kzalloc() (or
> kmalloc(GFP_ZERO|GFP_xxx) or whatever)

What pages would you clear? Linux uses every bit of memory it gets its
hands on, and pages that are written out stay around in case their contents
are needed later. So I see very little oportunity for scavenging pages for
zeroing (perhaps just stuff that went to closed/unmounted filesystems).

-- 
Horst von Brand                             vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl
Casilla 9G, Viņa del Mar, Chile                               +56 32 672616

- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 23 2000 - 21:00:29 EST