Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1161174AbXAZS4r (ORCPT ); Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:56:47 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1161175AbXAZS4r (ORCPT ); Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:56:47 -0500 Received: from zrtps0kn.nortel.com ([47.140.192.55]:47719 "EHLO zrtps0kn.nortel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1161174AbXAZS4q (ORCPT ); Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:56:46 -0500 X-Greylist: delayed 1267 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:56:46 EST Message-ID: <45BA49F2.2000804@nortel.com> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:35:30 -0600 From: "Chris Friesen" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2-6 (X11/20050513) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mel Gorman CC: Christoph Lameter , linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/8] Allow huge page allocations to use GFP_HIGH_MOVABLE References: <20070125234458.28809.5412.sendpatchset@skynet.skynet.ie> <20070125234558.28809.21103.sendpatchset@skynet.skynet.ie> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 26 Jan 2007 18:35:35.0098 (UTC) FILETIME=[C47129A0:01C74178] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1001 Lines: 23 Mel Gorman wrote: > Worse, the problem is to have high order contiguous blocks free at the > time of allocation without reclaim or migration. If the allocations were > not atomic, anti-fragmentation as it is today would be enough. Has anyone looked at marking the buffers as "needs refilling" then kick off a kernel thread or something to do the allocations under GFP_KERNEL? That way we avoid having to allocate the buffers with GFP_ATOMIC. I seem to recall that the tulip driver used to do this. Is it just too complicated from a race condition standpoint? We currently see this issue on our systems, as we have older e1000 hardware with 9KB jumbo frames. After a while we just fail to allocate buffers and the system goes belly-up. Chris - 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/