Re: [patch] Re: Linux 2.4.5-ac6

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Tue, 5 Jun 2001, Ivan Kokshaysky wrote:

> Hmm, yes. However, your patch isn't pretty, too. You may check
> the same area twice, and won't satisfy requested address > TASK_UNMAPPED_BASE.

 Only a single address may be checked twice.  There is no second loop I'm
trying to avoid.  The loop starts from addr or TASK_UNMAPPED_BASE,
whichever is lower.  If that won't succeed you won't be able to mmap
anything anyway.

> What do you think about following? Everything is scanned only once, and
> returned address matches specified one as close as possible.

 No, no, no...  The address specified is a hint only and the system is
free to use any other.  Actually this patch made me curious, why we should
change the limit -- TASK_SIZE is fine in all cases.  After a bit of
studying of Alpha headers, I concluded none of the patches is needed at
all, because TASK_UNMAPPED_BASE is set to:

((current->personality & ADDR_LIMIT_32BIT) ? 0x40000000 : TASK_SIZE / 2)

to support 32-bit binaries.  So if the personality is set appropriately
for netscape, mmap() should work fine as is, placing maps in the low 4GB.
No need to patch arch_get_unmapped_area(), but OSF/1 compatibility code
might need fixing.  I suppose an OSF/1 binary must have an appropriate
flag set in its header after building with the -taso option so that the
system knows the binary wants 32-bit addressing.

 I have no Alpha/Linux system available anymore -- could anyone else check
what the real problem with netscape is?

 Maciej

-- 
+  Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland   +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+        e-mail: [e-mail], PGP key available        +