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Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 18:05:30 -0200 (BRST)
From: Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>
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To: Marcelo Tosatti <marcelo@conectiva.com.br>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@redhat.com>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] fork() failing
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On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:

> Imagine people changing the point where the
>
> 	if ((gfp_mask & __GFP_FAIL))
> 		return;
>
> check is done (inside the freeing routines).
>
> I would like to have a _defined_ meaning for a "fail easily" allocation,
> and a simple unique __GFP_FAIL flag can't give us that IMO.

Actually, I guess we could define this to be the same point
where we'd end up freeing memory in order to satisfy our
allocation.

This would result in __GFP_FAIL meaning "give me memory if
it's available, but don't waste time freeing memory if we
don't have enough free memory now".

Space-wise these semantics could change (say, pages_low
vs. pages_min), but they'll stay the same when you look at
"how hard to try" or "how much effort to spend".

regards,

Rik
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