Re: [patch 1/9] GFP_ZERO fix

Andrew Morton
2005-04-13T02:28:49Z

Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> #define GFP_LEVEL_MASK (__GFP_WAIT|__GFP_HIGH|__GFP_IO|__GFP_FS| \
> - __GFP_COLD|__GFP_NOWARN|__GFP_REPEAT| \
> - __GFP_NOFAIL|__GFP_NORETRY|__GFP_NO_GROW|__GFP_COMP)
> + __GFP_COLD|__GFP_NOWARN|__GFP_REPEAT|__GFP_NOFAIL| \
> + __GFP_NORETRY|__GFP_NO_GROW|__GFP_COMP|__GFP_ZERO)

Passing GFP_ZERO into kmem_cache_alloc() is such a bizarre thing to do,
perhaps a BUG is the correct response.

I guess it could be argued that the kmem_cache_alloc() callers "knows" that
the ctor will be zeroing out all the objects, but it would seem cleaner to
me to pass the "you should use GFP_ZERO" hint into kmem_cache_create()
rather than kmem_cache_alloc().