Re: [RFC] [PATCH] kmem_alloc (generic wrapper for kmalloc and vmalloc)

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <c-d.hailfinger.kernel.2004@gmx.net>]

Robert Love schrieb:
> On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 06:19 +0100, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> 
>>Hi,
>>
>>it seems there is a bunch of drivers which want to allocate memory as
>>efficiently as possible in a wide range of allocation sizes. XFS and
>>NTFS seem to be examples. Implement a generic wrapper to reduce code
>>duplication.
>>Functions have the my_ prefixes to avoid name clash with XFS.
> 
> 
> No, no, no.  A good patch would be fixing places where you see this.
> 
> Code needs to conscientiously decide to use vmalloc over kmalloc.  The
> behavior is different and the choice needs to be explicit.

Yes, but what do you suggest for the following problem:
alloc(max_loop*sizeof(struct loop_device))

where sizeof(struct loop_device)==304 and 1<=max_loop<=16384

For the smallest allocation (304 bytes) vmalloc is clearly wasteful
and for the largest allocation (~ 5 MBytes) kmalloc doesn't work.


Regards,
Carl-Daniel