On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
> Proposal 'c' is that way. If you agree that "VM is just one of
> the resources" but think that there are "uses for sharing between
> different programs", proposal 'a' is for you.
Sorry, no. VM is the resource that execve() replaces. That is what
execve() is all about - build a new VM by binary and replace the VM
component of process with it.
execve() doesn't modify VM - it builds a new one from scratch. IOW, it's
not "load a program into existing address space". It's "build a new
address space by the program and attach it to virtual machine (aka.
process)".
Yes, if you are the sole owner of your VM you can cannibalize mm_struct
to avoid the overhead of kmem_cache_alloc(). But that should be (and is) a
transparent optimisation.
Think of it that way: we have virtual machines built from several
components. Thread of execution is one of the components (CPU), VM is
another (memory), descriptor table is IO space, etc. execve() is "build a
new VM and throw the old away". fork() is "build copies of everything and
make a new virtual machine out of them". clone() is "build copies of CPU
and some other parts and make a new virtual machine out of them, sharing
the remaining parts with the old one". exit() is "throw the virtual
machine away".
Heh. USENIX paper title: "Ghostwheel: Use of Reflections in Implementation
of rfork()-style Threads"...
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