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

[chas williams - CONTRACTOR]

In message <10F582F31B7CC582D409D2AE@sirius.fac.cs.cmu.edu>,Jeffrey Hutzelman w
rites:
>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.

yet there is precedent for this already: osi_Alloc{Small,Medium,Large}Space.
i am only asking for 33% more insanity.  perhaps the distinction of huge
and not huge is not appropriate; pageable versus non-pageable might be
a better choice.

currently, you have no clear idea (you can guess) what kind of memory you
might be from the allocator.  this does have an effect on reproducibility
of certain bugs.

>> 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.

i should have said 'could possibly'.  however, you must admit the
larger the allocation the more likely it is to fail.  afs doesnt
typically handle allocation failures well.