Re: OOPS with slab cache

[Jamie Lokier]

Horst von Brand wrote:
> > Now that /is/ a nice idea.  It shouldn't take much memory --
> > __persistant would probably be a small section that could be kmalloced.
> 
> No, just make it a fixed variable inside the kernel. No kmalloc() or other
> overhead at all. If it will stay put regardless, why make it dynamic?

1.  To avoid bloating the static kernel.  If every sound driver wants 1k
    of __persistant mixer information, and there are 30 sounds drivers,
    that's 29k wasted.

2.  Extend 1. this to a distribution kernel which includes modules for
    nearly every driver.  

3.  Because you don't want the static kernel to know about all the modules
    you might build and load into it later.  I often build modules prior
    to loading them.

4.  For modules compiled outside the tree.

5.  For distributed binary modules.

-- Jamie