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   🐧sima🐧 (sima@chaos.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Sep-2024 17:42:30 JST 🐧sima🐧

   • Greg K-H

   kangrejos in copenhagen was great, but the absolute 🤯 moment was when I learned that GFP_ stands for get_free_pages

   I had no idea. and @gregkh next to me had the same https://xkcd.com/1053/ experience

   #kernel

   • Embed this notice
     Greg K-H (gregkh@social.kernel.org)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Sep-2024 15:18:53 JST Greg K-H

     in reply to
     @sima Right after this happened, I went and checked the LDD3 book, and yes it says this in the chapter about memory:
     
     (internally performed by calling, eventually, __get_free_pages, which is the source of the GFP_ prefix))
     
     So I have no excuse for not remembering this either...
     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Linus Torvalds (torvalds@social.kernel.org)'s status on Sunday, 29-Dec-2024 03:48:32 JST Linus Torvalds

     in reply to

     • Greg K-H

     @gregkh @sima “eventually calling __get_free_pages”?

     You have to realize that when the GFP_xyz flags were introduced - back in 1992 - “get_free_page()” was the only way to allocate memory.

     So “GFP” wasn’t some odd internal thing. There was nothing else (ok, there was a very simply malloc() library on top of that “you can free and allocate one page” mode).

     No “eventually” about it. It was the thing.

     Jeff "never puts away anything, especially oven mitts" Cliff, Bringer of Nightmares 🏴‍☠️🦝🐙 🇱🇧🧯 🇨🇦🐧 likes this.