Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755578AbaFBPQL (ORCPT ); Mon, 2 Jun 2014 11:16:11 -0400 Received: from qmta06.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.30.56]:60293 "EHLO qmta06.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755409AbaFBPQI (ORCPT ); Mon, 2 Jun 2014 11:16:08 -0400 Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2014 10:16:03 -0500 (CDT) From: Christoph Lameter To: Vladimir Davydov cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org, hannes@cmpxchg.org, mhocko@suse.cz, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org Subject: Re: [PATCH -mm 5/8] slab: remove kmem_cache_shrink retval In-Reply-To: <20140531102740.GB25076@esperanza> Message-ID: References: <20140531102740.GB25076@esperanza> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, 31 May 2014, Vladimir Davydov wrote: > > Well slub returns an error code if it fails > > ... to sort slabs by the nubmer of objects in use, which is not even > implied by the function declaration. Why can *shrinking*, which is what > kmem_cache_shrink must do at first place, ever fail? Because there is a memory allocation failure. Or there may be other processes going on that prevent shrinking. F.e. We may want to merge a patchset that does defragmentation of slabs at some point. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/