Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] badblocks: Add core badblock management code

["Verma, Vishal L" <vishal.l.verma@intel.com>]

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On Tue, 2015-12-22 at 16:34 +1100, NeilBrown wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 05 2015, Verma, Vishal L wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2015-12-04 at 15:30 -0800, James Bottomley wrote:
> > [...]
> > > > +ssize_t badblocks_store(struct badblocks *bb, const char *page,
> > > > size_t len,
> > > > +			int unack)
> > > [...]
> > > > +int badblocks_init(struct badblocks *bb, int enable)
> > > > +{
> > > > +	bb->count = 0;
> > > > +	if (enable)
> > > > +		bb->shift = 0;
> > > > +	else
> > > > +		bb->shift = -1;
> > > > +	bb->page = kmalloc(PAGE_SIZE, GFP_KERNEL);
> > > 
> > > Why not __get_free_page(GFP_KERNEL)?  The problem with kmalloc of
> > > an
> > > exactly known page sized quantity is that the slab tracker for
> > > this
> > > requires two contiguous pages for each page because of the
> > > overhead.
> > 
> > Cool, I didn't know about __get_free_page - I can fix this up too.
> > 
> 
> I was reminded of this just recently I thought I should clear up the
> misunderstanding.
> 
> kmalloc(PAGE_SIZE) does *not* incur significant overhead and certainly
> does not require two contiguous free pages.
> If you "grep kmalloc-4096 /proc/slabinfo" you will note that both
> objperslab and pagesperslab are 1.  So one page is used to store each
> 4096 byte allocation.
> 
> To quote the email from Linus which reminded me about this
> 
> > If you
> > want to allocate a page, and get a pointer, just use "kmalloc()".
> > Boom, done!
> 
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/12/21/605
> 
> There probably is a small CPU overhead from using kmalloc, but no
> memory
> overhead.

Thanks Neil.
I just read the rest of that thread - and I'm wondering if we should
change back to kzalloc here.

The one thing __get_free_page gets us is PAGE_SIZE-aligned memory. Do
you think that would be better for this use? (I can't think of any). If
not, I can send out a new version reverting back to kzalloc.

	-Vishal


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