From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from max.phys.uu.nl (max.phys.uu.nl [131.211.32.73]) by kvack.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA31069 for ; Mon, 25 Jan 1999 10:24:02 -0500 Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 15:06:17 +0100 (CET) From: Rik van Riel Subject: Re: MM deadlock [was: Re: arca-vm-8...] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: Alan Cox Cc: Andrea Arcangeli , Linus Torvalds , "Stephen C. Tweedie" , "Dr. Werner Fink" , Zlatko Calusic , ebiederm+eric@ccr.net, saw@msu.ru, bredelin@ucsd.edu, Linux Kernel , Linux MM List-ID: On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Alan Cox wrote: > > If I understand well the problem is get more than 1< > phys pages in RAM. I think it should not too difficult to do a dirty hack > > Yep. We are talking about 2->4Mb sized chunks. We are also talking about > chunks that are allocated rarely > > alternate __get_big_pages that does some try to get many mem-areas of the > > maximal order contigous. Maybe it will not able to give you such contiguos > > memory (due mem fragmentation) but if it's possible it will give back it > > to you (_slowly_). > > That fact we effectively "poison" the various blocks of memory > with locked down kernel objects is what makes this so tricky. It > really needs some back pressure applied so that kernel allocations > come from a limited number of maxorder blocks, at least except > under exceptional circumstances. We need a different memory allocator for that. Maybe it's time to dig up my zone allocator proposal (on my home page) and adapt it to something working. Unfortunately I don't have the time to do that, so I'll leave the job to Alan or Stephen (who should have the time since they're with Red Hat)... > I think its too tricky for 2.2 even as a later retrofit Once the allocator is ready and stabilized, we might be able to retrofit it to 2.2. It's just a single module we need to touch... cheers, Rik -- If a Microsoft product fails, who do you sue? +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Linux memory management tour guide. riel@nl.linux.org | | Scouting Vries cubscout leader. http://www.nl.linux.org/~riel | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm my@address' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://humbolt.geo.uu.nl/Linux-MM/