Re: [PATCH] mm: warn only once if page table misaccounting is detected

[Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>]

On Tue 27-11-18 09:36:03, Heiko Carstens wrote:
> Use pr_alert_once() instead of pr_alert() if page table misaccounting
> has been detected.
> 
> If this happens once it is very likely that there will be numerous
> other occurrence as well, which would flood dmesg and the console with
> hardly any added information. Therefore print the warning only once.

Have you actually experience a flood of these messages? Is one per mm
message really that much? If yes why rss counters do not exhibit the
same problem?

> Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill@shutemov.name>
> Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
> Signed-off-by: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>
> ---
>  kernel/fork.c | 4 ++--
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
> index 07cddff89c7b..c887e9eba89f 100644
> --- a/kernel/fork.c
> +++ b/kernel/fork.c
> @@ -647,8 +647,8 @@ static void check_mm(struct mm_struct *mm)
>  	}
>  
>  	if (mm_pgtables_bytes(mm))
> -		pr_alert("BUG: non-zero pgtables_bytes on freeing mm: %ld\n",
> -				mm_pgtables_bytes(mm));
> +		pr_alert_once("BUG: non-zero pgtables_bytes on freeing mm: %ld\n",
> +			      mm_pgtables_bytes(mm));
>  
>  #if defined(CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE) && !USE_SPLIT_PMD_PTLOCKS
>  	VM_BUG_ON_MM(mm->pmd_huge_pte, mm);
> -- 
> 2.16.4

-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs