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Re: Fixed PR13146 by not allowing memory allocations to sleep
On Mon, 2011-10-31 at 11:19 -0400, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> mjw wrote:
>
> > [...]
> >> I cannot find what precisely triggers/causes the oom-killer to kick in.
> >> I hoped a GFP_WILLING_TO_WAIT_BUT_DONT_KILL_ANYBODY_JUST_BECAUSE_OF_ME
> >> flag would exist, but it isn't clear to me which GFP flag/combination
> >> that actually corresponds to.
> >
> > Looking at the kernel sources it seems that flag is __GFP_NORETRY.
> > [...]
>
> We used to use __GFP_NORETRY for e.g. map allocation, since commit
> 132c23b4 some years ago. So I think this just swings our pendulum
> back to a previous point.
Ha good. The pendulum swung back to the middle again you mean?
The thing that triggered all this was that the previous commit added
~__GFP_WAIT which triggered all those failures for allocations that were
fine with waiting a bit because they were done in user context.
I am happy with the current solution. But maybe there are other people
now not happy again?
Cheers,
Mark