In article <20010110131802.K488@dr-evil.shagadelic.org>,
Jason R Thorpe <thorpej@zembu.com> wrote:
>as well as the kernel stack for that context.  The reaper, along with the
>other things, frees this chunk of memory (since it contains the kernel
>stack, it obviously can't be freed while the processor is using it, and
>freeing it might require locking VM data structures, which is why the
>reaper thread has to do it ... it must be done within a valid context).

i had a chat with chuck silvers a couple of months ago, and our thoughts
were that we could get by without always using the reaper.   (it seems 
like an extra step on the process life time critical path.)    the idea 
was that if you've got another process ready to run you should switch to 
it, then free the final stuff from that process' context (rather than
bringing the extra overhead of a third process [reaper] into the picture).

chuck

-- 
Chuck Cranor                            http://www.research.att.com/info/chuck
Senior Technical Staff Member		chuck@research.att.com
Internet and Networking Systems Research Lab
AT&T Labs-Research, Florham Park, NJ