Re: kernel memory allocation failures

[David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 08:41:50PM -0800, Chuck Silvers wrote:
 > > | > So I propose to always check the return value of allocators with
 > > | > an 'if' and not a KASSERT.
 > > | 
 > > | There are some codes like "foo = kmem_alloc(size, KM_SLEEP);
 > > | KASSERT(foo != NULL)".
 > > | Should the codes be unified to use not KASSERT' but if'?
 > > 
 > > Yes (when it is possible), and the man page for kmem_alloc should be
 > > changed to reflect that.
 > 
 > (moving this discussion to tech-kern)
 > 
 > how about instead we fix the kmem_alloc() implementation to match
 > the man page?  that seems much more practical to me.  adding
 > failure checks and recovery code to the thousands of *alloc() calls
 > in the kernel would be a vast amount of work for very little
 > benefit.  an attempt to allocate an amount of memory large enough
 > that it can never succeed sounds like a bug to me, and it seems
 > better to fix any such bugs rather than add a vast amount of mostly
 > useless error handling code in hopes of papering over them.

concur

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost