dm ioctl: use kmalloc if possible

If the parameter buffer is small enough, try to allocate it with kmalloc()
rather than vmalloc().

vmalloc is noticeably slower than kmalloc because it has to manipulate
page tables.

In my tests, on PA-RISC this patch speeds up activation 13 times.
On Opteron this patch speeds up activation by 5%.

This patch introduces a new function free_params() to free the
parameters and this uses new flags that record whether or not vmalloc()
was used and whether or not the input buffer must be wiped after use.

Signed-off-by: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
1 file changed