Re: pagetable_ops: Hugetlb character device example

From: Adam Litke
Date: Wed Mar 21 2007 - 16:27:13 EST


On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 15:51 -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:43:48 CDT, Adam Litke said:
> > The main reason I am advocating a set of pagetable_operations is to
> > enable the development of a new hugetlb interface.
>
> Do you have an exit strategy for the *old* interface?

Not really. Hugetlbfs needs to be kept around for a number of reasons.
It was designed to support MAP_SHARED mappings and IPC shm segments. It
is probably still the best interface for those jobs. Of course
hugetlbfs has lots of users so we must preserve the interface for them.

But... once hugetlbfs is abstracted behind pagetable_operations, you
would have the option of configuring it out of the kernel without losing
access to huge pages by other means (such as the character device).

--
Adam Litke - (agl at us.ibm.com)
IBM Linux Technology Center

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