Re: 1GB/2GB/3GB User Space Splitting Patch 2.6.8.1 (PSEUDO SPAM)

From: Dave Jones
Date: Thu Aug 26 2004 - 17:14:20 EST


On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 08:24:38PM +0000, jmerkey@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> What do you plan to do when the driver base becomes as
> large as the one in WIndows 2000/XP

There's a slew of drivers for ancient hardware in Linux that will /never/
be supported in Windows 2000/XP. Given we also support a majority of modern
hardware, chances are we're either comparable, or maybe even surpassing
Microsoft in terms of number of drivers shipped.

> and you don't have enough memory to load all the drivers.

Since when do we load /all/ the drivers ? That would be silly.

> Right now, iptables barfs even with 3GB of address space when you load up
> about a dozen virtual network interfaces ?

I'll hazard a guess this has nothing whatsoever do to with address space sizes.

> Microsoft had this same problem (only at a much sooner juncture in their
> platform evolution) and went to VM support in the kernel
> itself to increase virtual address space for kernel apps, file systems, and
> drivers when thye hit the wall. It's coming time to start thinking about
> it.

If we did stupid things like trying to load every single driver, maybe.
But we don't, so I think you're chasing ghosts.

Dave

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