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Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 16:05:14 -0200 (BRST)
From: Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>
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To: <volodya@mindspring.com>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: mm question
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On Mon, 10 Dec 2001 volodya@mindspring.com wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Alan Cox wrote:
>
> > > I don't want to move them - I just want to collect all that are free and
> > > then try to free some more.
> >
> > How will you free them, you don't know who owns them.
>
> I think you misunderstood me - this allocation happens in response to
> the system call _not_ in an interrupt handler. So it is ok to wait -
> as long as needed. I was thinking of calling page swapper or something
> and perhaps going after I/O buffers first.

Even if you have a handle on a physical page, you don't know
what processes are using the page, nor if there are additional
users besides the processes.

This makes it rather hard to go around trying to free pages
within a certain physical range.

cheers,

Rik
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