[OpenAFS-devel] [PATCH] fix openafs crashes on linux 2.6.10-2.6.12, and all RHEL4 kernels

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

On Wednesday, April 18, 2007 03:47:17 PM -0400 chas williams - CONTRACTOR 
<chas@cmf.nrl.navy.mil> wrote:

> In message
> <Pine.GSO.4.61-042.0704181524380.1487@johnstown.andrew.cmu.edu>,Derr ick
> J Brashear writes:
>>> i am still against the dual mode allocator.
>>
>> Is your cellphone analog capable?
>
> i am strange enough to have analog mode disabled.  however, this isnt
> quite the same thing.  the "problem" with the "dual mode" allocator
> is that it has to remember what kind of memory it allocated so that it
> can later free it.  it would be better to have an explicity huge memory
> allocater.

The problem with this is that it requires every caller to know whether the 
thing it is allocating is "huge" or "not huge", where the distinction 
depends on the operating system, platform, and perhaps even kernel 
configuration.  That means we'd be pushing platform-dependent code into 
every caller of osi_Alloc, which is exactly what the abstraction is 
intended to prevent.

> it would also serve to point out sections of the afs code
> that could stand some improvement.

No; the size of individual memory allocations is not necessarily an 
indicator of code quality.