Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:42:45 +0200 (CEST) | From | Ingo Molnar <> | Subject | Re: the new VM |
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On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Okay, I'm user on small machine and I'm doing stupid thing: I've got > 6MB ram, and I keep inserting modules. I insert module_1mb.o. Then I > insert module_1mb.o. Repeat. How does it end? I think that > kmalloc(GFP_KERNEL) *has* to return NULL at some point.
if a stupid root user keeps inserting bogus modules :-) then thats a problem, no matter what. I can DoS your system if given the right to insert arbitrary size modules, even if kmalloc returns NULL. For such things explicit highlevel protection is needed - completely independently of the VM allocation issues. Returning NULL in kmalloc() is just a way to say: 'oops, we screwed up somewhere'. And i'd suggest to not work around such screwups by checking for NULL and trying to handle it. I suggest to rather fix those screwups.
the __GFP_SOFT suggestion handles these things nicely.
Ingo
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