Message-ID: <4165E0A7.7080305@yahoo.com.au>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 10:34:47 +1000
From: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
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To: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
CC: Chris Wright <chrisw@osdl.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       Nick Piggin <piggin@cyberone.com.au>
Subject: Re: kswapd in tight loop 2.6.9-rc3-bk-recent
References: <20041007142019.D2441@build.pdx.osdl.net> <20041007164044.23bac609.akpm@osdl.org>
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Andrew Morton wrote:

>
>This probably won't fix it.
>
>It looks like the code will lock up if all zones are out of unreclaimable
>memory, but you won't be hitting that.
>
>

Out of _reclaimable_ memory?

It shouldn't if all_unreclaimable is being set correctly.

>I also wonder if it'll lock up if just the first zone has ->all_unreclaimable.
>
>

Well, not if the all_unreclaimable flag is set, but if it should be and 
isn't,
then probably it will lock up.

>I think a good starting point here will be to revert the most recent
>change.
>

That may fix it for the simple fact that kswapd will just go through its
priority loop once then stop.

I think that resetting all_unreclaimable in free_pages_bulk is the wrong
idea though, because that will keep it clear if a bit of kernel memory is
being pinned and freed in the background, won't it?

I had a look and decided that all_unreclaimable should probably be cleared
only if vmscan.c frees some memory - but I couldn't really come up with any
hard numbers to back me up :P

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