linux-kernel - Re: slab: setup allocators earlier in the boot sequence

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-Id: <1244792380.7172.77.camel@pasglop>
Date:	Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:39:40 +1000
From:	Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>
To:	Pekka J Enberg <penberg@...helsinki.fi>
Cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Linux Kernel list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>, mingo@...e.hu
Subject: Re: slab: setup allocators earlier in the boot sequence

On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 17:34 +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

> I don't like that approach at all. Fixing all the call sites... we are
> changing things all over the place, we'll certainly miss some, and
> honestly, it's none of the business of things like vmalloc to know about
> things like what kmalloc flags are valid and when... 

Oh and btw, your patch alone doesn't fix powerpc, because it's missing
a whole bunch of GFP_KERNEL's in the arch code... You would have to
grep the entire kernel for things that check slab_is_available() and
even then you'll be missing some.

For example, slab_is_available() didn't always exist, and so in the
early days on powerpc, we used a mem_init_done global that is set form
mem_init() (not perfect but works in practice). And we still have code
using that to do the test.

Anyway, I think changing all the call sites is the wrong approach,
especially for things that can routinely be called after boot when
GFP_KERNEL is the right thing to do.

Cheers,
Ben.

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/