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Quote: Bloat Is Bloat

August 8, 2008 - 2:46pm
Submitted by Jeremy on August 8, 2008 - 2:46pm.

"The default value should be 'off', unless it's _needed_ by people. Have you guys looked at the size of the kernel lately? Bloat is bloat. Just because it's conditional is not an excuse."

— Linus Torvalds, in a July 14th, 2008 message on the Linux Kernel mailing list.

Memory tester

August 8, 2008 - 5:07pm
Anonymous (not verified)

I don't even know why they put a memory tester in the kernel.

Memory tester belongs in the userspace, not in kernelspace.

It is just silly, unnescersary and bloat with a memory tester in the kernel.

Whats next? Tetris in the kernel?

People should just use Memtest86+ instead.

tetris

August 8, 2008 - 6:50pm
watkins (not verified)

tetris in the core of the kernel would be madness...

but

watkins@watkins-desktop:~$ modprobe tetris


would be awesome!

Not sure Memtest86+ works

August 8, 2008 - 9:49pm
Nony Mouse (not verified)

Not sure Memtest86+ works for architectures other than x86.

I just did a search for a version of tetris implemented in the kernel, but found nothing.

I'm quite surprised.

Actually: > config

August 9, 2008 - 4:25am
Anonymous (not verified)

Actually:

> config MEMTEST_BOOTPARAM
> bool "Memtest boot parameter"
> depends on X86_64

"Memory tester belongs in

August 9, 2008 - 4:42am
Anonymous (not verified)

"Memory tester belongs in the userspace, not in kernelspace."

Oh, so in your world, userspace has access to all memory, and knows what real addresses belongs to virtual addresses?

Your kernels must be a marvel of security.

kernel

August 9, 2008 - 9:36am
via (not verified)

Technically speaking if the process is root, it has access to all memory and information on the current page mappings anyway. It'll just be slower.

Ummmm, no!

August 10, 2008 - 5:27pm
Anonymous (not verified)

Ummmm, no! Do some real research before you rant BS.

Why not?

August 10, 2008 - 10:42pm
Anonymous (not verified)

/dev/mem can allow access to all memory. which includes kernel memory and everyone's page tables.

The only thing is, that once

August 11, 2008 - 12:36pm
Anonymous Coward (not verified)

The only thing is, that once system is booted up it might already use corrupted memory, memory tester would work in user space, but it's effectiveness would be close to zero.
memtest86 takes up about 190KB of memory
Linux kernel - 1-3Mbytes
Booted system - well, you know.

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