Re: Virtual address space exhaustion (was Discontigmem virt_to_page() )

["Martin J. Bligh" <Martin.Bligh@us.ibm.com>]

> On 3 May 2002 20:35, Martin J. Bligh wrote:
>> > No. It's not stupid. Unix defines a kind of operating system that
>> > has certain characteristics and/or attributes. Process/kernel shared
>> > address space is one of them. It's a name that has historical
>> > signifigance.
>> 
>> Yes it is stupid. This is a small implementation detail, and has no
>> real importance whatsoever. People have done this in the past
>> (Dynix/PTX did it) will do so in the future. Nor does the kernel
>> address space have to be global and shared across all tasks
>> as stated earlier in this thread. What makes it Unix is the interface
>> it presents to the world, and how it behaves, not the little details
>> of how it's implemented inside.
> 
> I'm curious where it is visible to userspace?
> (I'm asking for educational purposes)

Where what is visible to userspace? If you mean the bit about 
"the interface it presents to the world", I meant Linux in 
general, not this feature. The whole point is that this is 
invisble to userspace (apart from performance and a lack of
architectural restrictions you might have been expecting) 
therefore it's irrelevant to whether it's "Unix" like or not.

M.