Changes to VALUE_PAIR structure

[John Dennis]

On 11/23/2011 10:41 AM, Phil Mayers wrote:
> On 11/23/2011 01:40 PM, Alan DeKok wrote:
>
>>     I don't see much point in trying to reduce the memory footprint any
>> further.  What would help is allowing arbitrary length strings, but that
>> requires changing a *lot* of code.
>
> One thing I wondered about a while back was using a better allocator to
> help with things like this. In particular, "talloc" (GPL, small, used by
> samba) is very nice; you can do some clever things like:
>
> ptr = talloc(ctx, 10);
> sub = talloc(ptr, 10);
> ptr == talloc_parent(sub); /* useful in some cases */
> talloc_free(ptr); /* also frees sub */
>
> You can "break" the link if you need to move blocks around etc.
>
> Not sure if it would help with variable-length strings per se, but it
> might be preferable to using a dumb allocator if implementing it.

FWIW, we've been using talloc in our SSSD (System Security Services 
Daemon [1]) implementation. talloc is packaged independently in Fedora. 
I know SSSD is being picked by Ubuntu so I expect you'll see talloc 
packages showing up in other distros too independent of Samba.

I've worked with a number of packages which use "arenas" or "pools" for 
allocation like talloc, they have some very attractive aspects.

[1] SSSD is a system daemon. Its primary function is to provide access 
to identity and authentication remote resource through a common 
framework that can provide caching and offline support to the system. 
Gives you all the wonders of remote centralized authentication (single 
sign-on) but a good user experience for laptops disconnected from the 
network, plus a ton of other features.


-- 
John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>

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