Re: [PATCH] 2/2 Prezeroing large blocks of pages during allocation

[Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Dave Hansen wrote:

> On Sun, 2005-02-27 at 13:43 +0000, Mel Gorman wrote:
> > +		/*
> > +		 * If this is a request for a zero page and the page was
> > +		 * not taken from the USERZERO pool, zero it all
> > +		 */
> > +		if ((flags & __GFP_ZERO) && alloctype != ALLOC_USERZERO) {
> > +			int zero_order=order;
> > +
> > +			/*
> > +			 * This is important. We are about to zero a block
> > +			 * which may be larger than we need so we have to
> > +			 * determine do we zero just what we need or do
> > +			 * we zero the whole block and put the pages in
> > +			 * the zero page.
> > +			 *
> > +			 * We zero the whole block in the event we are taking
> > +			 * from the KERNNORCLM pools and otherwise zero just
> > +			 * what we need. The reason we do not always zero
> > +			 * everything is because we do not want unreclaimable
> > +			 * pages to leak into the USERRCLM and KERNRCLM
> > +			 * pools
> > +			 *
> > +			 */
> > +			if (alloctype != ALLOC_USERRCLM &&
> > +			    alloctype != ALLOC_KERNRCLM) {
> > +				area = zone->free_area_lists[ALLOC_USERZERO] +
> > +					current_order;
> > +				zero_order = current_order;
> > +			}
> > +
> > +
> > +			spin_unlock_irqrestore(&zone->lock, *irq_flags);
> > +			prep_zero_page(page, zero_order, flags);
> > +			inc_zeroblock_count(zone, zero_order, flags);
> > +			spin_lock_irqsave(&zone->lock, *irq_flags);
> > +
> > +		}
> > +
> >  		return expand(zone, page, order, current_order, area);
> >  	}
> >
>
> I think it would make sense to put that in its own helper function.
> When comments get that big, they often reduce readability.  The only
> outside variable that gets modified is "area", I think.
>
> So, a static inline:
>
> 	area = my_new_function_with_the_huge_comment(zone, ..., area);
>

Will make that change in the next version. It makes perfect sense.

> BTW, what kernel does this apply against?  Is linux-2.6.11-rc4-v18 the
> same as bk18?
>

It applies on top of 2.6.11-rc4 with the latest version of the placement
policy. Admittedly, the naming of the tree is not very obvious.

-- 
Mel Gorman
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