From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S966086AbXDGQcr (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Apr 2007 12:32:47 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S966108AbXDGQcr (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Apr 2007 12:32:47 -0400 Received: from mail.tmr.com ([64.65.253.246]:60056 "EHLO gaimboi.tmr.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S966090AbXDGQco (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Apr 2007 12:32:44 -0400 Message-ID: <4617C806.2030304@tmr.com> Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2007 12:34:14 -0400 From: Bill Davidsen Organization: TMR Associates Inc, Schenectady NY User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061105 SeaMonkey/1.0.6 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu CC: Jan Engelhardt , Ken Chen , Tomas M , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [patch] remove artificial software max_loop limit References: <20070330141524.5f6cff29.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <460FE380.2050608@slax.org> <460FE478.9070901@slax.org> <4616AE9C.9060400@tmr.com> <11158.1175962732@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> In-Reply-To: <11158.1175962732@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote: > On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:33:32 EDT, Bill Davidsen said: > >> Jan Engelhardt wrote: >> > > >>> Who cares if the user specifies max_loop=8 but still is able to open up >>> /dev/loop8, loop9, etc.? max_loop=X basically meant (at least to me) >>> "have at least X" loops ready. >>> >>> >> You have just come up with a really good reason not to do unlimited >> loops. >> > > That, and I'd expect the intuitive name for "have at least N ready" to > be 'min_loop=N'. 'max_loop=N' means (to me, at least) "If I ask for N+1, > something has obviously gone very wrong, so please shoot my process before > it gets worse". > > Maybe what's needed is *both* a max_ and min_ parameter? > I think that max_loop is a sufficient statement of the highest number of devices needed, and can reasonably interpreted as both "I may need this many" and "I won't legitimately want more." As I recall memory is allocated as the device is set up, so unless you want to use the max memory at boot, "just in case," the minimum won't be guaranteed anyway. Something else could eat memory. In practice I think asking for way too many is more common than not being able to get to the max. It may happen but it's a corner case, and status is returned. -- bill davidsen CTO TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979