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From: Keith Owens <kaos@ocs.com.au>
To: "Adam J. Richter" <adam@yggdrasil.com>
cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: initdata for modules? 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 26 Nov 2000 07:30:44 -0800."
             <200011261530.HAA09799@baldur.yggdrasil.com> 
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Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 09:54:57 +1100
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On Sun, 26 Nov 2000 07:30:44 -0800, 
"Adam J. Richter" <adam@yggdrasil.com> wrote:
>	In reading include/linux/init.h, I was surprised to discover
>that __init{,data} expands to nothing when compiling a module.
>I was wondering if anyone is contemplating adding support for
>__init{,data} in module loading, to reduce the memory footprints
>of modules after they have been loaded.

It has been discussed a few times but nothing was ever done about it.
AFAIK the savings were not seen to be that important because modules
occupy complete pages.  __init would have to be stored in a separate
page which was then discarded.  It would complicate insmod, rmmod,
ksymoops and gdb.  gdb against the kernel already gets confused by
vmlinux data that is discarded and gdb has problems with modules at the
best of times.  Definitely 2.5 material, if at all.

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