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From: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
To: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan)
Subject: Re: kswapd/tg3 issue
Cc: yoh@psychology.rutgers.edu, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:19:36 +1100
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Alan <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> Just got a logwatch daily mail which revealed a problem:
>> [2024412.788680] kswapd1: page allocation failure. order:2, mode:0x20
>> and a lengthy backtrace with head
>> 
>> ,------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> | [2024412.795212] Call Trace:
>> | [2024412.799768]  <IRQ> [<ffffffff8020c852>] __alloc_pages+0x27a/0x291
>> | [2024412.806452]  [<ffffffff802a08e3>] kmem_getpages+0x5e/0xd8
>> | [2024412.812370]  [<ffffffff80212c68>] cache_grow+0xd0/0x185
>> | [2024412.818064]  [<ffffffff80245c4f>] cache_alloc_refill+0x18c/0x1da
>> | [2024412.824625]  [<ffffffff802a1979>] __kmalloc+0x93/0xa3
>> | [2024412.830145]  [<ffffffff80222e9e>] __alloc_skb+0x54/0x117
>> | [2024412.835958]  [<ffffffff803b8a55>] __netdev_alloc_skb+0x12/0x2d
>> | [2024412.842347]  [<ffffffff80370292>] tg3_alloc_rx_skb+0xbb/0x146
>> `---
>> full dmesg is at
>> http://www.onerussian.com/Linux/bugs/bug.kswapd/dmesg
>> 
>> is that critical? seems to behave ok but...
> 
> Its tell us that the machine got very very tight on memory, far tighter
> than it probably ever should in normal situations. It is harmless of
> itself and if you only get the odd one is not a worry.

Since this is a 2nd order allocation, it could also be that you have
memory but it's fragmented.  If you aren't using jumbograms you can
try disabling that.

Cheers,
-- 
Visit Openswan at http://www.openswan.org/
Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
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