Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1422724AbVLONbc (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Dec 2005 08:31:32 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1422723AbVLONbc (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Dec 2005 08:31:32 -0500 Received: from cantor.suse.de ([195.135.220.2]:65190 "EHLO mx1.suse.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1422719AbVLONbc (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Dec 2005 08:31:32 -0500 Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 14:31:22 +0100 From: Andi Kleen To: Kyle Moffett Cc: Andi Kleen , "David S. Miller" , sri@us.ibm.com, mpm@selenic.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [RFC] Fine-grained memory priorities and PI Message-ID: <20051215133122.GE23384@wotan.suse.de> References: <20051215033937.GC11856@waste.org> <20051214.203023.129054759.davem@davemloft.net> <20051215.002120.133621586.davem@davemloft.net> <9E6D85FF-E546-4057-80EF-7479021AFAA1@mac.com> <20051215090401.GV23384@wotan.suse.de> <8FC3785F-01B3-4F9A-9E3C-89E90CB719B0@mac.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <8FC3785F-01B3-4F9A-9E3C-89E90CB719B0@mac.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1194 Lines: 26 > Naturally this is all still in the vaporware stage, but I think that > if implemented the concept might at least improve the OOM/low-memory > situation considerably. Starting to fail allocations for the cluster > programs (including their kernel allocations) well before failing > them for the swap-fallback tool would help the original poster, and I > imagine various tweaked priorities would make true OOM-deadlock far > less likely. The problem is that deadlocks can happen even without anybody running out of virtual memory. The deadlocks GFP_CRITICAL was supposed to handle are deadlocks while swapping out data because the swapping on some devices needs more memory by itself. This happens long before anything is running into a true oom. It's just that the memory cleaning stage cannot make progress anymore. Your proposal isn't addressing this problem at all I think. Handling true OOM is a quite different issue. -Andi - 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/