illumos gate

With gcc 4.4.4, the situation is terrible. It doesn't matter if you are looking at debug or non-debug build, you'll see:

> nopageage::nm
Value              Size               Type  Bind  Other Shndx    Name
0xfffffffffb943e80|0x0000000000000004|OBJT |LOCL |0x0  |12      |nopageage
> page_free::dis ! grep nopageage
>

So, you can set the global with mdb all you want, it just won't do anything useful at all because the compiler propagated the apparently constant value into the one expression.

Looking at the history of that code, all I can say is the two lines in question (the static global and the if statement) predate OpenSolaris launch.

1. un-static-ify it
2. remove it
   In the absence of anyone wanting to use it, it makes sense to remove it.

For completeness: studio keeps the global as well as the load & comparison in page_free.