Re: [RESEND Patch] kcore: remove its pointless size

Eric W. Biederman
2009-07-01T23:25:20Z

Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> writes:

> On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:08:50 +0800
> Amerigo Wang <xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Linus fixes wrong size of /proc/kcore problem in commit 9063c61fd5cbd.
>>
>> But its size still looks insane, since it never equals to the size
>> of physical memory.
>
> Better changelogs, please!
>
> I think that what you're saying is that the stat.st_size field of the
> /proc/kcore inode does not equal the amount of physical memory, and
> that you think it should do so?
>
> If that is correct then it would be appropriate to explain what value
> the stat.st_size field has before the patch and afterwards. Just
> calling it "insane" isn't optimal.
>
>> Signed-off-by: WANG Cong <amwang@redhat.com>
>> Cc: mtk.manpages@gmail.com
>>
>> (Andrew, could you please just cut off the kernel part from below? :)
>>
>> ---
>> diff --git a/fs/proc/kcore.c b/fs/proc/kcore.c
>> index 59b43a0..eca5201 100644
>> --- a/fs/proc/kcore.c
>> +++ b/fs/proc/kcore.c
>> @@ -405,9 +405,6 @@ read_kcore(struct file *file, char __user *buffer, size_t buflen, loff_t *fpos)
>> static int __init proc_kcore_init(void)
>> {
>> proc_root_kcore = proc_create("kcore", S_IRUSR, NULL, &proc_kcore_operations);
>> - if (proc_root_kcore)
>> - proc_root_kcore->size =
>> - (size_t)high_memory - PAGE_OFFSET + PAGE_SIZE;
>> return 0;
>> }
>> module_init(proc_kcore_init);
>
> AFAICT this means that proc_root_kcore->size will remain uninitialised
> until a process opens and reads from /proc/kcore. So on initial boot
> the `ls' output will presumably show a size of zero, and this will
> change once /proc/kcore has been read?

Which is better than showing a random number of dubious relationship
to the size we normally show. That code is just a maintenance problem.

> If so, should we run get_kcore_size() in proc_kcore_init(), perhaps?
>
> In fact, do we need to run get_kcore_size() more than once per boot?
>
> AFAICT we only run kclist_add() during bootup, so if proc_kcore_init()
> is called at the appropriate time, we can permanently cache its result?
>
> In which case get_kcore_size() and kclist_add() can be marked __init.
>
> Maybe that's all wrong - I didn't look terribly closely.

Memory hot add I expect is the excuse. There is more that could be
done. But this patch is an obvious bit of chipping away nonsense
code.

Eric