Re: Looking for links: Why Linux Doesn't Page Kernel Memory?

[Rik van Riel]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2002, David Woodhouse wrote:
> [e-mail] said:
> >  Memory is relatively cheap, and the complexity of such a paging
> > kernel is huge (you have to pin down disk driver and I/O paths for
> > example). Linux prefers to try to keep simple debuggable approaches to
> > things.
>
> You could do it. Start with kmalloc_pageable ...

Funny things are bound to happen when code gets preempted because
of page faults...

> It's debatable what kind of benefit it would give you over and above
> just fixing specific cases like page tables, though.

In all extreme cases you'll find that 90% of kernel memory is
tied up in just a few data structures.

Making a generic infrastructure just to deal with these specific
cases is almost certainly overkill.

regards,

Rik
-- 
Bravely reimplemented by the knights who say "NIH".

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/