From owner-freebsd-current Wed May 12 9: 5: 5 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from enst.enst.fr (enst.enst.fr [137.194.2.16]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C14AE151B7 for ; Wed, 12 May 1999 09:04:59 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from beyssac@enst.fr) Received: from bofh.enst.fr (bofh.enst.fr [137.194.32.191]) by enst.enst.fr (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id SAA16299; Wed, 12 May 1999 18:04:57 +0200 (MET DST) Received: by bofh.enst.fr (Postfix, from userid 12426) id 61B1ED226; Wed, 12 May 1999 18:04:57 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <19990512180457.A2829@enst.fr> Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 18:04:57 +0200 From: Pierre Beyssac To: Stefan Bethke Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: mbuf starvation References: <19990512172544.A440@enst.fr> <803947.3135519807@d225.promo.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i In-Reply-To: <803947.3135519807@d225.promo.de>; from Stefan Bethke on Wed, May 12, 1999 at 05:43:27PM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, May 12, 1999 at 05:43:27PM +0200, Stefan Bethke wrote: > I've discussed this with Garett back in September. The reason is quite > simple: unless all cases of not checking for a NULL pointer returned are > fixed (or instrumented with a panic), it is better to fail with a panic > than with some obscure problem later on. Yes, I would agree in the general case, but in that particular case the reasonning is flawed: you panic every time, while there are many cases that currently are handled gracefully by the caller. In other words, you don't leave any choice to the caller. That's bad. IHMO it's not even a good thing in general because mbuf starvations can and _will_ happen as a normal condition, not because of bugs but because of high resource use. It can have its uses for debugging purposes, as a compilation option. -- Pierre Beyssac pb@enst.fr To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message