Re:Microsoft's Skydrive sends two million NULL characters
by mikeash on Monday November 12, 2012 @11:08AM
(#4773359)
I don't see why we should be able to assume that the kernel's per-process data structures are negligible. Maybe they are, but you'd have to measure it, you can't just assume it.
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Re:Microsoft's Skydrive sends two million NULL characters
by javert on Monday November 12, 2012 @12:02PM
(#4773617)
I've done enough kernel work to feel that it's a safe assumption in general, but that there may be some exceptions.
For example, I wouldn't be completely shocked if somebody said, "We really need to support a particular version of an old OS that had unusually high per-process overhead in some particular corner case."
If anybody knows how much kernel memory a basic process needs in, say, modern-day Linux, please chime in. I tried looking it up, but didn't find it. Probably it's just sizeof(task_struct), which I can't be bothered to check right now, plus a few KB for stack stuff.