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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 21:39:10 +0100
From: Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com>
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To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
CC: David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se>, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>,
        Nick Urbanik <nicku@vtc.edu.hk>,
        Kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: 2.4.2-pre3 compile error in 6pack.c
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Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> > > Would it be costly/reasonable to have kmalloc -not- panic if given a
> > > too-large size?  Principle of Least Surprises says it should return NULL
> > > at the very least.
> >
> > It's on purpose; to find the erroneous drivers.
> 
> Unfortunately Linus forgot to provide a way to check if a kmalloc is too
> large so the drivers cannot work around it. Dave put an incredibly ugly
> constant assumption in af_unix for this and no doubt more will follow.
> 
> So -ac added the constant
>
What about removing the BUG?

I means all drivers should be aware that kmalloc() > 16 kB fail quite
often.
kmalloc() over 128 kB always fail.

Do you really prefer if drivers contain a 

static inline void* safe_kmalloc(size, flags)
{
	if(size > LIMIT)
		return NULL;
	return kmalloc(size, flags);
}

--
	Manfred
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