linux-kernel - Re: init's children list is long and slows reaping children.

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Message-ID: <461B3795.4020902@garzik.org>
Date:	Tue, 10 Apr 2007 03:07:01 -0400
From:	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
CC:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Dave Jones <davej@...hat.com>, Robin Holt <holt@....com>,
	"Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Jack Steiner <steiner@...ricas.sgi.com>
Subject: Re: init's children list is long and slows reaping children.

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 9 Apr 2007, Andrew Morton wrote:
>>>    10 ?        S<     0:00 [khelper]
>> That one's needed to parent the call_usermodehelper() apps.  I don't think
>> it does anything else.  We used to use keventd for this but that had some
>> problem whcih I forget.
> 
> I think it was one of a long series of deadlocks. 
> 
> Using a "keventd" for many different things sounds clever and nice, but 
> then sucks horribly when one event triggers another event, and they depend 
> on each other. Solution: use independent threads for the events.

Nod.  That's the key problem with keventd.  Independent things must wait 
on each other.

That's why I feel thread creation -- cheap under Linux -- is quite 
appropriate for many of these situations.

	Jeff



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