From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 12:01:21 +0100 (BST) From: Hugh Dickins Subject: Re: What to expect with the 2.6 VM In-Reply-To: <20030630200237.473d5f82.akpm@digeo.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Andrew Morton Cc: Andrea Arcangeli , mel@csn.ul.ie, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Mon, 30 Jun 2003, Andrew Morton wrote: > Andrea Arcangeli wrote: > > > > described this way it sounds like NOFAIL imply a deadlock condition. > > NOFAIL is what 2.4 has always done, and has the deadlock opportunities > which you mention. The other modes allow the caller to say "don't try > forever". __GFP_NOFAIL is also very badly named: patently it can and does fail, when PF_MEMALLOC or PF_MEMDIE or not __GFP_WAIT. Or is the idea that its users might as well oops when it does fail? Should its users be changed to use the less perniciously named __GFP_REPEAT, or should __alloc_pages be changed to deadlock more thoroughly? Hugh -- 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: aart@kvack.org