Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 17:18:18 -0700
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
To: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [oom]: [0/4] fix OOM deadlock running OAST
Message-Id: <20040623171818.39b73d52.akpm@osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <20040624000308.GK1552@holomorphy.com>
References: <0406231407.HbLbJbXaHbKbWa5aJb1a4aKb0a3aKb1a0a2aMbMbYa3aLbMb3aJbWaJbXaMbLb1a342@holomorphy.com>
	<20040623151659.70333c6d.akpm@osdl.org>
	<20040623223146.GG1552@holomorphy.com>
	<20040623153758.40e3a865.akpm@osdl.org>
	<20040623230730.GJ1552@holomorphy.com>
	<20040623163819.013c8585.akpm@osdl.org>
	<20040624000308.GK1552@holomorphy.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 1435
Lines: 34

William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 04:38:19PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > I don't think it _is_ relevant.  Wev'e scanned the crap out of all the
> > eligible zones, found nothing swappable outable or otherwise reclaimable. 
> > That's as good a definition of oom as you're likely to get.  It takes care
> > of mlocked user memory too.
> 
> The actual net effect of all this is blowing away if (nr_swap_pages > 0)
> for __GFP_WIRED allocations. Removing those 2 lines (and the one line of
> whitespace next to it) will pass the test I observed failure in.

OK.

> It's a
> judgment call as to whether it's beneficial in general, as it does
> insulate userspace somewhat from needing to wait for slow IO being the
> ostensible cause of the allocation failure.

mm...  I can only see that happening if the IO system is retiring write
requests at much less than 10/sec, which seems unlikely.  Still, that can
be tuned around.

> RedHat vendor kernels have removed the check entirely

When telling us this sort of thing, please always specify the kernel version.

I assume you're referring to a 2.6 kernel?  If so, some thwapping might be
in order.
-
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/