Re: [patch] remove artificial software max_loop limit

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Jan Engelhardt wrote:
On Apr 1 2007 11:10, Ken Chen wrote:
On 4/1/07, Tomas M <[email protected]> wrote:

I believe that IF you _really_ need to preserve the max_loop module parameter, then the parameter should _not_ be ignored, rather it should have the same function like before - to limit the loop driver so if you use max_loop=10 for example, it should not allow loop.c to create more than 10 loops.
Blame on the dual meaning of max_loop that it uses currently: to initialize a set of loop devices and as a side effect, it also sets the upper limit. People are complaining about the former constrain, isn't it? Does anyone uses the 2nd meaning of upper limit?

Who cares if the user specifies max_loop=8 but still is able to open up /dev/loop8, loop9, etc.? max_loop=X basically meant (at least to me) "have at least X" loops ready.

You have just come up with a really good reason not to do unlimited loops. With the current limit people can count on a script mounting files, or similar, to neither loop for a VERY long time or to eat their memory. Whatever you think of programs without limit checking, this falls in the range of expecting an unsigned char to have a certain upper bound, and argues that the default limit should be the current limit and that setting a lower bound should work as a real and enforced limit.

If a new capability is being added, and I think it's a great one, then people using the capability should be the ones explicitly doing something different. Plauger's law of least astonishment.

--
Bill Davidsen <[email protected]>
  "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot
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