Re: Deprecating and removing SLOB

From: Paul Cercueil
Date: Wed Nov 09 2022 - 16:00:03 EST


Hi Vlastimil,

I was actually using SLOB until recently for a device flasher program (kernel + initramfs + dtb, booted over USB) for Ingenic SoCs. I picked SLOB just because it said "embedded systems" in menuconfig and some of my boards have as little as 32 MiB RAM.

It worked fine on some boards, but on others it had about a 25% chance of booting, and 75% chance of hanging at boot. I tried printk-debugging it, and was coming to the conclusion that it's memory corruption of some sort.

Then I switched to SLUB and all the problems are gone. Same with SLAB.

So while I can't say for sure that SLOB is broken (it might be triggering a bug somewhere else), I am highly suspicious that it is.

So yeah... axe it.

Cheers,
-Paul