From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail172.messagelabs.com (mail172.messagelabs.com [216.82.254.3]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C10FE6B004F for ; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:34:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:56:17 +0100 (BST) From: Hugh Dickins Subject: Re: [BUG 2.6.30] Bad page map in process In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <20090712095731.3090ef56@siona> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: Guennadi Liakhovetski Cc: Haavard Skinnemoen , linux-mm@kvack.org, kernel@avr32linux.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Sun, 12 Jul 2009, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote: > > 2. the specific BUG that I posted originally wasn't very interesting, > because it wasn't the first one. Having read a few posts I wasn't quite > sure how really severe this BUG was, i.e., whether or not it requiret a > reboot. There used to be a message like "reboot is required" around this > sort of exceptions, but then it has been removed, so, I thought, it wasn't > required any more. But the fact is, that once one such BUG has occurred, > new ones will come from various applications and eventually the system > will become unusable. I replaced Bad page state's reboot is needed message by just the BUG prefix: partly because the bad page handling _is_ now more resilient; but more because I don't like wasting screenlines which could hold vital info, and because I didn't see how this BUG differs from others in whether or not you need a reboot. A BUG means the kernel is in unknown territory: if you're brave and want to gather more info, you try to keep on running after a BUG; if you're cautious, you reboot as soon as possible. (Hmm, but perhaps I should wire these in to panic_on_oops??) You did the right thing: kept on running, then decided it wasn't worth it. (But you've only sent the one pair of messages gathered: okay, let's forget the rest until you've sorted the hardware angle.) 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: email@kvack.org