Re: [PATCH] kernel: use kcalloc instead kmalloc/memset

From: Christoph Lameter
Date: Fri Aug 05 2005 - 13:22:51 EST


On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Stephen Pollei wrote:

> > On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > > > This would imply a similiar kmalloc() would be useful as well.
> > > > Second, how relevant is it for the kernel?
> > > we've had a non-negliable amount of security holes because of this
> > So why don't we have a similiar kmalloc()?
> You mean something like:
> static void __bad_kmalloc_safe_nonconstant_size(void);

Hmm. If we had kcmalloc then we may be able to add a zero bit to the slab
allocator. If we would obtain zeroed pages for the slab then we may skip
zeroing of individual entries. However, the cache warming effect of the
current zeroing is then not occurring. Not sure if this would make sense
but this is a possible optimization if we had kcmalloc.


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