Re: module changes

[Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>]

In message <20030218195140.27b0798f.akpm@digeo.com> you write:
> Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> wrote:
> > The problem is that then you have to have to know whether this is a
> > per-cpu thing created in a module, or not, when you use it 8(
> > 
> > There are two things we can use to alleviate the problem.  The first
> > would be to put a minimal cap on the per-cpu data size (eg. 8k).  The
> > other possibility is to allocate on an object granularity, in which
> > case the rule becomes "no single per-cpu object can be larger than
> > XXX", but the cost is to write a mini allocator.
> > 
> 
> Is kmalloc_percpu() not suitable?

Unfortunately, no.  You have to use the same offsets as the in-kernel
DEFINE_PER_CPU declarations, meaning that each cpu's stuff needs to be
"sizeof kernel per-cpu-section" apart.

Which means an allocator which keeps a linked list of NR_CPUS * sizeof
kernel-per-cpu-section things, and allocs and frees from that.

Hence this patch just tacks it on the end of the module, rather than
deal with an allocator.  A minor improvement would be only to allocate
for the maximum possible CPU, which means about 6k * numcpus per
module which declares per-cpu data, which is probably fine.

Rusty.
--
  Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell.