>>>>> "Jan" == Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Jan> On Feb 20 2008 20:50, Balbir Singh wrote: >> John Stoffel wrote: >>> I know this is a pedantic comment, but why the heck is it called such >>> a generic term as "Memory Controller" which doesn't give any >>> indication of what it does. >>> >>> Shouldn't it be something like "Memory Quota Controller", or "Memory >>> Limits Controller"? >> >> It's called the memory controller since it controls the amount of >> memory that a user can allocate (via limits). The generic term for >> any resource manager plugged into cgroups is a controller. Jan> For ordinary desktop people, memory controller is what developers Jan> know as MMU or sometimes even some other mysterious piece of Jan> silicon inside the heavy box. That's what was confusing me at first. I was wondering why we needed a memory controller when we already had one in Linux! Also, controlling a resource is more a matter of limits or quotas, not controls. Well, I'll actually back off on that, since controls does have a history in other industries. But for computers, limits is an expected and understood term, and for filesystems it's quotas. So in this case, I *still* think you should be using the term "Memory Quota Controller" instead. It just makes it clearer to a larger audience what you mean. >> If you look through some of the references in the document, we've >> listed our plans to support other categories of memory as well. >> Hence it's called a memory controller >> >>> Also, the Kconfig name "CGROUP_MEM_CONT" is just wrong, it should >>> be "CGROUP_MEM_CONTROLLER", just spell it out so it's clear what's >>> up. >> This has some history as well. Control groups was called containers >> earlier. That way a name like CGROUP_MEM_CONT could stand for >> cgroup memory container or cgroup memory controller. Jan> CONT is shorthand for "continue" ;-) (SIGCONT, f.ex.), ctrl or Jan> ctrlr it is for controllers (comes from Solaris iirc.) Right, CTLR would be more regular shorthand for CONTROLLER. Basically, I think you're overloading a commonly used term for your own uses and when it's exposed to regular users, it will cause confusion. Thanks, John -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
