From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 22:35:13 -0300 (BRT) From: Rik van Riel Subject: Re: About the free page pool In-Reply-To: <3D740C35.9E190D04@zip.com.au> 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: Scott Kaplan , linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: On Mon, 2 Sep 2002, Andrew Morton wrote: > The most important are 1-order allocations (8k, for kernel stacks). > The memory allocator will retry these allocations indefinitely, so > they end up succeeding, somehow. > > I think there's a bug in there, actually. If all zones have enough > free memory but there are no 1-order pages available, then the 1-order > allocator tried to run page reclaim, which will say "nope, nothing > needs doing". Eventually, someone else returns some memory and coalescing > happens. It's not a very glorious part of the kernel design. This is fixable with rmap, though. Another old item on my TODO list. ;( regards, Rik -- Bravely reimplemented by the knights who say "NIH". http://www.surriel.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com/ -- 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/