Re: [RFC][PATCH 2/2] first callers of process_deny_checkpoint()

From: Pavel Machek
Date: Sat Oct 11 2008 - 10:48:47 EST


Hi!

> > > Hmm, I don't know too much about aio, but is it possible to succeed with
> > > io_getevents if we didn't first do a submit? It looks like the contexts
> > > are looked up out of current->mm, so I don't think we need this call
> > > here.
> > >
> > > Otherwise, this is neat.
> >
> > Good question. I know nothing, either. :)
> >
> > My thought was that any process *trying* to do aio stuff of any kind
> > is going to be really confused if it gets checkpointed. Or, it might
> > try to submit an aio right after it checks the list of them. I
> > thought it best to be cautious and say, if you screw with aio, no
> > checkpointing for you!
>
> as long as there's total transparency and the transition from CR-capable
> to CR-disabled state is absolutely safe and race-free, that should be
> fine.
>
> I expect users to quickly cause enough pressure to reduce the NOCR areas
> of the kernel significantly ;-)
>
> In the long run, could we expect a (experimental) version of hibernation
> that would just use this checkpointing facility to hibernate? That would
> be way cool for users and for testing: we could do transparent kernel
> upgrades/downgrades via this form of hibernation, between CR-compatible
> kernels (!).

Well, if we could do that, I guess we could also use CR to 'hibernate'
your desktop then continue on your notebook. And yes that sounds cool.

> Pie in the sky for sure, but way cool: it could propel Linux kernel
> testing to completely new areas - new kernels could be tried
> non-intrusively. (as long as a new kernel does not corrupt the CR data
> structures - so some good consistency and redundancy checking would be
> nice in the format!)

Well, for simple apps, it should not be that hard...
Pavel
--
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
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