Re: [PATCH 3/5] page_cgroup: make page tracking available for blkio

Jonathan Corbet
2011-02-22T23:27:33Z

On Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:01:47 +0100
Andrea Righi <arighi@develer.com> wrote:

> > My immediate observation is that you're not really tracking the "owner"
> > here - you're tracking an opaque 16-bit token known only to the block
> > controller in a field which - if changed by anybody other than the block
> > controller - will lead to mayhem in the block controller. I think it
> > might be clearer - and safer - to say "blkcg" or some such instead of
> > "owner" here.
>
> Basically the idea here was to be as generic as possible and make this
> feature potentially available also to other subsystems, so that cgroup
> subsystems may represent whatever they want with the 16-bit token.
> However, no more than a single subsystem may be able to use this feature
> at the same time.

That makes me nervous; it can't really be used that way unless we want to
say that certain controllers are fundamentally incompatible and can't be
allowed to play together. For whatever my $0.02 are worth (given the
state of the US dollar, that's not a whole lot), I'd suggest keeping the
current mechanism, but make it clear that it belongs to your controller.
If and when another controller comes along with a need for similar
functionality, somebody can worry about making it more general.

jon