Contiguous Memory Allocator

[diama13]

Hello, i have ubuntu software and i would like to install some patches.The pathes are about the contiguous memory allocator(device drivers). I would like some help about how to do this. Also, may i have to install all these patches that are available? Thank you

[Rubberman]

What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish?

[diama13]

I have read about CMA in the article "DEEP DIVE INTO CONTIGUOUS MEMORY ALLOCATOR"
and i would like to install these patches. I have just started to deal with device drivers in linux and i need this to allocate huge contiguous physical memory.

[Rubberman]

Ok. First, visit your distribution's web site and read their FAQ on building kernels for that distribution - the instructions for RPM-based ones such as Red Hat, Fedora, Suse are different from DEB-based ones such as Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, et al. Then, install the kernel headers, development, and source packages. At that point, you might be able to simply change the kernel configuration (current kernel config files are usually found in /boot as config-x.y.z* where x.y.z is the kernel version). You would copy that file to the kernel source directory as .config, then run the command "make menuconfig" or "make xconfig". You might be able to simply reconfigure the kernel to use the contiguous memory allocator. If you cannot, then you will need to build the driver source to install (modprobe or insmod) into the kernel. It is usually recommended that you build the kernel and drivers as a normal user, and only install them as root, or with sudo as appropriate for your system ("make install").