Re: [patch] jiffies wraparound [Re: 2.1.125 Show stopper list: Draft]

Mitchell Blank Jr (mitch@execpc.com)
Tue, 27 Oct 1998 09:47:57 -0600


(ok I said my previous message on this topic would be the final one...
sorry, one more)

> > I much prefer a "getpagesize()" system call on architectures that need it,
> > instead of needlessly polluting some configuration space.
>
> Your obsession with new syscalls is misguided IMHO Linus.

I don't have a problem with new syscalls - just hastily chosen ones.

Linus is proposing:
asmlinkage int sys_getpagesize(void) { return PAGE_SIZE; }

Why not:
#define KERNEL_SC_PAGESIZE 0
asmlinkage int sys_sysconf(int what) {
return (what==KERNEL_SC_PAGESIZE)?PAGE_SIZE:-EINVAL; }

That can't have bloated the kernel by more than a few bytes, but it
lets us return other sysconf data in the future.

sys_getpagesize() is a dead-end syscall. I think it's the least elegant
way to solve this.

> getpagesize()
> is a library issue. Hell it doesnt matter if glibc implements it by doing
> maps on each power of 2 boundary and seeing which is the first not to tail.
>
> So why do we need a getpagesize() syscall in the first place 8)

And for our next trick we'll stop returning the amount of free disk space
in sys_statvfs... libc can just write data to the drive until it gets
-ENOSPC ;-)

-Mitch

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