From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 12:44:51 -0700 From: Andrew Morton Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/5] make slab gfp fair Message-Id: <20070514124451.c868c4c0.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <20070514161224.GC11115@waste.org> References: <20070514131904.440041502@chello.nl> <20070514161224.GC11115@waste.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Matt Mackall Cc: Christoph Lameter , Peter Zijlstra , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, Thomas Graf , David Miller , Daniel Phillips , Pekka Enberg List-ID: On Mon, 14 May 2007 11:12:24 -0500 Matt Mackall wrote: > If I understand this correctly: > > privileged thread unprivileged greedy process > kmem_cache_alloc(...) > adds new slab page from lowmem pool > do_io() > kmem_cache_alloc(...) > kmem_cache_alloc(...) > kmem_cache_alloc(...) > kmem_cache_alloc(...) > kmem_cache_alloc(...) > ... > eats it all > kmem_cache_alloc(...) -> ENOMEM > who ate my donuts?! Yes, that's my understanding also. I can see why it's a problem in theory, but I don't think Peter has yet revealed to us why it's a problem in practice. I got all excited when Christoph asked "I am not sure what the point of all of this is.", but Peter cunningly avoided answering that ;) What observed problem is being fixed here? -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org