Re: [RFC PATCH 30/35] Add generic_page_range() function

Keir Fraser
2006-03-22T14:33:10Z

On 22 Mar 2006, at 11:21, Nick Piggin wrote:

> Couple of issues with the current code though:
>
> firstly, the name.

Okay, can you suggest a better one? That's the best I could come up
with that wasn't long winded. :-)

> secondly, I think you confuse our (confusing) terminology: the page
> that holds pte_ts is not the pte_page, the pte_page is the page that
> a pte points to

What should we call it? Essentially we want to be able to get the
physical address of a PTE in some cases, and passing struct page
pointer seemed the best way to be able to derive that. I can rename it
to something else vaguely plausible if the only problem is the semantic
clash with Linux's idiomatic use of pte_page.

> lastly, you don't allow any control over the type of pages that are
> walked: this could well be unusably slow for some cases. At least
> you should proably design the interface so we can iterate over
> present, not present, all, etc so it becomes widely usable. Normally
> I'd say to wait until users come up but in this case the function
> isn't a speed demon anyway, and you also don't want to give people
> any excuses not to use it.

You mean iterate only over PTEs that are already present, or only those
that were *not* previously present, or all (present and non-present)?
Is that really useful? If so then yes, it's not hard to add.

Thanks,
Keir