cvs commit: src/sys/vm vm_kern.c

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <20040216214602.GD35475 at elvis.mu.org>
            Maxime Henrion <mux at FreeBSD.org> writes:
: > How would that be different than M_NOWAIT and then trying again a
: > couple of times?  Each time will fail if it is too big.  And that's
: > not meaningfully distinguishable from there not being enough memory
: > currently available to satisfy the request.
: 
: Because if there is a memory shortage but it's possible to get the
: requested amount of memory later (because it's smaller than kmem_map),
: M_WAITOK | M_SAFE won't fail but wait while M_NOWAIT will fail right
: away.  Why trying again when we already have a flag for this?  What this
: patch does is allow to call malloc(verybignumber) without crashing to
: help in cases where it's hard to define what's a reasonable size.

It seems of dubious value then.  If someone is going to call malloc
with a verybignumber by mistake, they are just as likely to neglect to
put M_SAFE in place.

Warner