Linux Sysctl Cleaning To Eventually Erase ~64 Bytes Of Bloat Per Array

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Sysctl Cleaning To Eventually Erase ~64 Bytes Of Bloat Per Array

Some code cleaning within the sysctl space of the Linux kernel will eventually eliminate around 64 bytes of bloat per array within the kernel where a sentinel can be removed...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.6-Sysctl-Cleaning

[bachchain]

64 bytes per array

That's quite the sentinel

[Joe2021]

About what amount of sysctl arrays are we talking here, typically?

[MastaG]

Thank God... I was really suffocating without my 64 bytes!

[aviallon]

Thank God... I was really suffocating without my 64 bytes!

If you have a few thousand of them, it's already a few hundred kilobytes. Measurable in IoT or for projects like OpenWrt.

[EphemeralEft]

If you have a few thousand of them, it's already a few hundred kilobytes. Measurable of iot.

At the expense of "slowing down the moves of kernel/sysctl.c arrays" and "truly painful code refactoring". I'd gladly sacrifice a few hundred KB of memory to use more mature, faster, less error-prone code. Extra memory isn't worth much if the kernel crashes.

[Jakobson]

About what amount of sysctl arrays are we talking here, typically?

On my computer it would save 141 kB:
$ sudo sysctl -a | wc -l
2259
$ echo "2259*64/1024" | bc
141

[zexelon]

Jakobson Based on your math above:

$ sudo sysctl -a | wc -l
2038
$ echo "2038*64/1024" | bc
127

A full 127Kb on my current machine. I demand to have my 127kb on 128Gb of mem back!

(thanks for putting the quick math together, I was curious if this was really something to look at... its not if this math is correct)

[rmfx]

Please stop making fun of cleanup improvements. Even small, when multiplied by millions, they end up huge.
Even if it was 1 Byte per array, that would be welcome.

I am so fed up with bloat in sofwares that I give whatever I get a warm welcome nowadays.

[zexelon]

Please stop making fun of cleanup improvements. Even small, when multiplied by millions, they end up huge.
Even if it was 1 Byte per array, that would be welcome.

I am so fed up with bloat in sofwares that I give whatever I get a warm welcome nowadays.

It's perfectly fine to make light of this... it was published as a news worthy item and therefor subject to public discourse. Really super tiny items when multiplied by large numbers are still really tiny numbers.

That said, code cleanup is always a good thing! It just may not all be "news worthy".