Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 24 May 2007 11:50:55 -0700 | From | Andrew Morton <> | Subject | Re: [RFC] [-mm] Remove 'unsafe' LZO decompressor |
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On Thu, 24 May 2007 18:15:17 +0100 Michael-Luke Jones <mlj28@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Attached is a patch which may be desirable for -mm. It applies > directly to 2.6.22-rc2-mm1. > > The patch removes the 'unsafe' LZO decompression function, lowering > the size of the minilzo.c file by nearly 500 out of an original 1727 > lines. It also removes references to the 'unsafe' decompression > function in the public LZO header and the EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL declaration. > > This is intended to provoke some discussion over whether a > decompression function able to scribble on arbitrary memory is > desirable in the mainline kernel, whatever the performance increases. > > Over and above the security/stability implications of using this > code, it can also be argued to represent an unnecessary duplication > of the vast majority of LZO decompression code. This is due to the > lack of likely in-kernel uses of the 'unsafe' function. > > Only a single user for this 'unsafe' code has been suggested, the > 'Compressed Caching' project. This code is highly unlikely to move > into mainline in the same timeframe as the LZO code. All of the other > suggested uses require decompression of untrusted data, such that the > 'safe' function should be used. > > Comments / disagreement all welcome :)
This is obviously a highly desirable thing to do for a number of reasons. But have we quantified the performance difference? - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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