Whats the rvmalloc() story?

From: Rick Richardson (rickr@mn.rr.com)
Date: Sat Feb 10 2001 - 23:08:08 EST

I note that at least 5 device drivers have similar implementations
of rvmalloc()/rvfree() et al:

        ieee1394/video1394.c
        usb/ibmcam.c
        usb/ov511.c
        media/video/bttv-driver.c
        media/video/cpia.c

rvmalloc()/rvfree() are functions that are used to allocate large
amounts of physically non-contiguous kernel virtual memory that will
then be mmap()'ed into a user process.

I just got done writing a driver that needed rvmalloc() in order to do
chip level simulation. Yank and put to the rescue.

Whats the story behind rvmalloc() et al? From what I could tell,
about a year ago there were some patches to move rvmalloc() into
vmalloc() as a blessed feature of the kernel. But it looks to
me like these patches didn't "take".

Is there some other way of doing this now? If so, does somebody
need to go into these drivers and patch them for the blessed way?
If not, is there some plan in place to bless these functions and
remvoe the code duplication?

-Rick 

-- 
Rick Richardson  rickr@mn.rr.com      http://home.mn.rr.com/richardsons/
Twins Cities traffic animations are at http://members.nbci.com/tctraffic/#1
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