From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Timur Tabi <ttabi@interactivesi.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org
Subject: Re: kernel hangs in 118th call to vmalloc
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 21:38:29 +0100 (BST) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <E15cv3e-0003vf-00@the-village.bc.nu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <3B8FDA36.5010206@interactivesi.com> from "Timur Tabi" at Aug 31, 2001 01:40:54 PM
> What this routine does is call vmalloc() repeatedly for a number of 1MB
> chunks until it fails or until it's allocated 128MB (CLEAR_BLOCK_COUNT
> is equal to 128 in this case). Then, it starts freeing them.
>
> The side-effect of this routine is to page-out up to 128MB of RAM.
> Unfortunately, on a 128MB machine, the 118th call to vmalloc() hangs the
> system. I was expecting it to return NULL instead.
>
> Is this a bug in vmalloc()? If so, is there a work-around that I can use?
vmalloc shouldnt be hanging the box, although in 2.4.2 the out of memory
handling is not too reliable. You have to understand vmalloc isnt meant to
be used that way and the kernel gets priority over user space for allocs so
is able to get itself to the point it killed off all user space.
Alan
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2001-08-31 20:38 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2001-08-31 18:40 Timur Tabi
2001-08-31 20:38 ` Alan Cox [this message]
2001-09-08 18:30 ` Eric W. Biederman
2001-09-08 19:39 ` Timur Tabi
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