Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262087AbUJZDwd (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Oct 2004 23:52:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262100AbUJZDtM (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Oct 2004 23:49:12 -0400 Received: from smtp208.mail.sc5.yahoo.com ([216.136.130.116]:44436 "HELO smtp208.mail.sc5.yahoo.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S262086AbUJZDsW (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Oct 2004 23:48:22 -0400 Message-ID: <417DC8F2.7000902@yahoo.com.au> Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 13:48:02 +1000 From: Nick Piggin User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040820 Debian/1.7.2-4 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andrea Arcangeli CC: Rik van Riel , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: lowmem_reserve (replaces protection) References: <20041025170128.GF14325@dualathlon.random> <20041026015825.GU14325@dualathlon.random> In-Reply-To: <20041026015825.GU14325@dualathlon.random> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2173 Lines: 49 Andrea Arcangeli wrote: > On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 09:48:25PM -0400, Rik van Riel wrote: > >>On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Andrea Arcangeli wrote: >> >> >>>This is a forward port to 2.6 CVS of the lowmem_reserve VM feature in >>>the 2.4 kernel. >>> >>> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/patches/v2.6/2.6.9/lowmem_reserve-1 >> >>- unsigned long protection[MAX_NR_ZONES]; >>+ unsigned long lowmem_reserve[MAX_NR_ZONES]; >> >>The gratituous renaming of variable and function names makes >>it hard to see what this patch actually changed. Hard enough >>that I'm not sure what the behavioural difference is supposed >>to be. > > > the behavioural difference is the API and the fact the feaure is now > enabled with sane values (the previous code was disabled by default and > it was unusable with that API). besides fixing the API the patch nukes > dozens of useless lines of code and a buffer overflow. The sysctl > definitely needs renaming or it'd break the ABI with userspace, it's far > from a gratituous rename. since I was foroced to change the sysctl name > accordingly with the new 2.4 API, I thought renaming the variable that > is set by the sysctl was also required, otherwise the sysctl is called > lowmem_reserve and the variable is still called protection. Clearly it's > much cleaner if _both_ sysctl and variable are called lowmem_reserve. > > I could have used protection2 to still use the "protection" name, but > lowmem_reserve (btw, the same name I used first in 2.4, before > protection ever existed in 2.6) looks nicer to me. > I'd say go with the name change. "protection" is fairly vague... OTOH, lowmem_reserve doesn't quite carry the meaning that it is _protecting_ lower zones from higher zone allocations... maybe lowmem_protection? But I don't mind too much. I see classzone_idx snuck in, can we leave that as alloc_type please? Otherwise, looks great. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/