Hi Vegard,

On Jan 27, 2008 11:30 PM, Vegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@gmail.com> wrote:
quoted text
> > Depends on how you track object initialization. An object returned by
> > kmem_cache_alloc() is always initialized if the cache it comes from has a
> > constructor.
>
> I think there's a pretty big chance I'm wrong (or misunderstanding
> something) here, so I'll just ask:
> setup_object() from mm/slub.c is what calls the ctor. Shouldn't this
> be called from slab_alloc() as well? (I'm marking the data
> "uninitialized" there before returning the object.) Otherwise you
> might get back an object that is initialized with the previous owner's
> data. Or is this intentional?

It's intentional. The caller of kmem_cache_free() is expected to put
the object in such a state that it can be recycled immediately when
kmem_cache_alloc() for that cache is called. You can find the design
rationale for that in Bonwick's original paper on slab:
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/bonwick94slab.html

                        Pekka
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