RE: [RFC V2 PATCH] rtnetlink: Fix problem with buffer allocation

-----Original Message-----
From: David Miller [mailto:davem@davemloft.net]
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 1:48 PM
To: Rose, Gregory V
Cc: bhutchings@solarflare.com; netdev@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC V2 PATCH] rtnetlink: Fix problem with buffer allocation

From: "Rose, Gregory V" <redacted>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:41:57 +0000

quoted

The second item sort of matches what I said in the last reply.  Base
the buffer allocation size on the maximum possible for the given
extension which as I said, is up to 255 VFs for the case under
immediate consideration.

That's what we're trying to avoid, because that will result in multi-order
allocations (which are failure prone) when most of the time such a large
buffer is entirely unnecessary.

quoted

The first one seems like a good idea but I wonder what the effect
would be on a system with a large number of interfaces.

It's already expensive to dump a large number of devices, and in
effect you'll be optimizing the buffer allocation which could in fact
end up helping performance.

OK, I'll see what I can do.

- Greg