Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:53:20 +0200 | From | Tomas M <> | Subject | Re: [patch] remove artificial software max_loop limit |
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Andrew Morton wrote: > On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:25:37 -0700 > "Ken Chen" <kenchen@google.com> wrote: > >> -module_param(max_loop, int, 0); >> -MODULE_PARM_DESC(max_loop, "Maximum number of loop devices (1-256)"); > > So.. this change will cause a fatal error for anyone who is presently > using max_loop, won't it? If they're doing that within their > initramfs/initrd/etc then things could get rather ugly for them.
I consider myself the most precious user of max_loop.
The max_loop parameter would cause a fatal error only in the case if you modprobe loop manually, for example:
$ modprobe loop max_loop=200
But people don't usually use this, read below.
> I don't know how much of a problem this will be in practice - do > people use max_loop much?
yes, but no as a module parameter.
People usually use max_loop as a 'kernel boot parameter' passed in APPEND section in a boot loader (such as LILO for example), not as a parameter for module in initrd. Why? Because it's easier; people are lazy, people compile loop.c into kernel so they don't need to update the loop.ko module in initrd every time a new Kernel is released.
I believe that IF you _really_ need to preserve the boot parameter, then the parameter should _not_ be ignored, rather it should have the same function like before - to limit the loop driver so if you use max_loop=10 for example, it should not allow loop.c to create more than 10 loops.
And if no parameter is used at all, there will be unlimited amount of loops. Simply clever :)
This will make it _completely_ backward-compatible, with very small code change I guess.
Just my two cents.
Thank you for reading so far.
Tomas M slax.org
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