Memory management in Linux

Memory management in Linux

[Josef E. Galea]

Hi all,

Does the linux kernel allow a process to handle its own memory pages 
instead of using the kernel's virtual memory manager?

Thanks & Happy Holidays
Josef

Re: Memory management in Linux

[Coywolf Qi Hunt]

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 14:05:44 +0100, Josef E. Galea
<josefeg@euroweb.net.mt> wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Does the linux kernel allow a process to handle its own memory pages
> instead of using the kernel's virtual memory manager?
> 
> Thanks & Happy Holidays
> Josef


That's quite related to ``adaptive page replacement''. Linux doesn't
support that at present imho.

--cqh


-- 
Coywolf Qi Hunt
Homepage http://sosdg.org/~coywolf/

Re: Memory management in Linux

[Josef E. Galea]

Coywolf Qi Hunt wrote:

>On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 14:05:44 +0100, Josef E. Galea
><josefeg@euroweb.net.mt> wrote:
>  
>
>>Hi all,
>>
>>Does the linux kernel allow a process to handle its own memory pages
>>instead of using the kernel's virtual memory manager?
>>
>>Thanks & Happy Holidays
>>Josef
>>    
>>
>
>
>That's quite related to ``adaptive page replacement''. Linux doesn't
>support that at present imho.
>
>--cqh
>
>
>  
>
Ok I may have got the name wrong :). What I am trying to do is to 
implement a package on linux similiar to the TreadMarks by Alan Cox et 
al. (ref. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/amza96treadmarks.html) that runs 
at kernel level instead of user level. Right now I think that inorder to 
achieve what I want to do, I have to change the code of the linux 
virtual memory manager. This is ok for academic purposes (which is my 
aim) however it severly reduces portability (it is much easier to just 
load a kernel module than to patch and recompile the kernel).

Thanks
Josef

Re: Memory management in Linux

[Florian Weimer]

* Josef E. Galea:

> Does the linux kernel allow a process to handle its own memory pages 
> instead of using the kernel's virtual memory manager?

You could play some tricks using mprotect(2), but I'm not sure if this
is enough for your application.

Re: Memory management in Linux

[Walter Liu]

Josef E. Galea wrote:

> Ok I may have got the name wrong :). What I am trying to do is to 
> implement a package on linux similiar to the TreadMarks by Alan Cox et 
> al. (ref. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/amza96treadmarks.html) that runs 
> at kernel level instead of user level. Right now I think that inorder 
> to achieve what I want to do, I have to change the code of the linux 
> virtual memory manager. This is ok for academic purposes (which is my 
> aim) however it severly reduces portability (it is much easier to just 
> load a kernel module than to patch and recompile the kernel).
>
Kernel-level thread or code can modify  mm_struct,vma,pde,pte,page 
protection bits,etc.
I think that it can modify  everything  in kernel.

Regards,
LWT