[PATCH V2 2/2] of: remove /proc/device-tree

[Grant Likely]

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt
<benh at kernel.crashing.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2013-03-22 at 13:03 -0500, Nathan Fontenot wrote:
>> We don't ever free old property values, mainly I assume since we don't keep
>> reference counts and can't know when it is safe to do so. The problem I
>> am starting to see on pseries is that we are getting very large properties.
>> One of the biggest culprits is the property on pseries systems to describe
>> the memory on the system in the device tree. These are big and getting
>> bigger as memory increases, additionally this property is update every
>> time memory is DLPAR added or removed from the system which can lead to
>> leaving a bunch of memory that should be free'ed.
>>
>> Given that, is there (or has there been) any discussion on adding reference
>> counts to properties in the device tree? With the myriad ways to get at
>> the value of a property this may not be feasible but I would like to hear
>> any thoughts from the community.
>
> My assumption was always that the lifetime of property values is tied
> the the lifetime of the node they are in. IE, we wouldn't free a
> property removed from a node but we could free all properties when
> the node goes away...
>
> Not the best but would do...
>
> refcount of properties, well ... Grant, do we get kobjects for them with
> the sysfs stuff ? That could do the trick...

No. Kobjects are only created for the nodes.

g.