Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261404AbUKFPaE (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 Nov 2004 10:30:04 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261402AbUKFPaE (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 Nov 2004 10:30:04 -0500 Received: from mail-relay-4.tiscali.it ([213.205.33.44]:31639 "EHLO mail-relay-4.tiscali.it") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261404AbUKFP37 (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 Nov 2004 10:29:59 -0500 Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 16:29:03 +0100 From: Andrea Arcangeli To: Hugh Dickins Cc: Nick Piggin , Jesse Barnes , Marcelo Tosatti , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] Remove OOM killer from try_to_free_pages / all_unreclaimable braindamage Message-ID: <20041106152903.GA3851@dualathlon.random> References: <20041106015051.GU8229@dualathlon.random> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-GPG-Key: 1024D/68B9CB43 13D9 8355 295F 4823 7C49 C012 DFA1 686E 68B9 CB43 X-PGP-Key: 1024R/CB4660B9 CC A0 71 81 F4 A0 63 AC C0 4B 81 1D 8C 15 C8 E5 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1058 Lines: 20 On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 09:47:56AM +0000, Hugh Dickins wrote: > Problematic, yes: don't overlook that GFP_REPEAT and GFP_NOFAIL _can_ > fail, returning NULL: when the process is being OOM-killed (PF_MEMDIE). that looks weird, why that? The oom killer must be robust against a task not going anyway regardless of this (task can be stuck in nfs or similar). If a fail path ever existed, __GFP_NOFAIL should not have been used in the first place. I don't see many valid excuses to use __GFP_NOFAIL if we can return NULL without the caller running into an infinite loop. btw, PF_MEMDIE has always been racy in the way it's being set, so it can corrupt the p->flags, but the race window is very small to trigger it (and even if it triggers, it probably wouldn't be fatal). That's why I don't use PF_MEMDIE in 2.4-aa. - 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/