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From: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
To: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Linux Kernel List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-mm@kvack.org, Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>,
	Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
	Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>,
	KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>,
	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] Reduce watermark-related problems with the per-cpu allocator V2
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:38:25 -0500 (CDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1008230835220.5750@router.home> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20100823130127.GP19797@csn.ul.ie>

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010, Mel Gorman wrote:

> > The maximum time for which the livelock can exists is the vm stat
> > interval. By default the counters are brought up to date at least once per
> > second or if a certain delta was violated. Drifts are controlled by the
> > delta configuration.
> >
>
> While there is a maximum time (2 seconds I think) the drift can exist
> in, a machine under enough pressure can make a mess of the watermarks
> during that time. If it wasn't the case, these livelocks with 0 pages
> free wouldn't be happening.

So because we go way beyond the watermarks we reach a state in which a
livelock exists that does not go away when the counters are finally
updated?


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  reply	other threads:[~2010-08-23 13:38 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2010-08-23  8:00 Mel Gorman
2010-08-23  8:00 ` [PATCH 1/3] mm: page allocator: Update free page counters after pages are placed on the free list Mel Gorman
2010-08-23 12:47   ` Christoph Lameter
2010-08-23  8:00 ` [PATCH 2/3] mm: page allocator: Calculate a better estimate of NR_FREE_PAGES when memory is low and kswapd is awake Mel Gorman
2010-08-23 12:56   ` Christoph Lameter
2010-08-23 13:03     ` Mel Gorman
2010-08-23 13:41       ` Christoph Lameter
2010-08-23 13:55         ` Mel Gorman
2010-08-23 16:04           ` Christoph Lameter
2010-08-23 16:13             ` Mel Gorman
2010-08-23  8:00 ` [PATCH 3/3] mm: page allocator: Drain per-cpu lists after direct reclaim allocation fails Mel Gorman
2010-08-23 23:17   ` KOSAKI Motohiro
2010-08-23 12:45 ` [PATCH 0/3] Reduce watermark-related problems with the per-cpu allocator V2 Christoph Lameter
2010-08-23 13:01   ` Mel Gorman
2010-08-23 13:38     ` Christoph Lameter [this message]
2010-08-23 13:39       ` Mel Gorman

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