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Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 15:11:25 -0200 (BRDT)
From: Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>
To: "Forever shall I be." <zinx@microsoftisevil.com>
cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: 3-order allocation failed
In-Reply-To: <20001026091847.A30837@bliss.zebra.net>
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On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, Forever shall I be. wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 02:57:30PM +0300, Pasi K?rkk?inen wrote:

> > __alloc_pages: 2-order allocation failed.
> > __alloc_pages: 2-order allocation failed.
> > __alloc_pages: 5-order allocation failed.
> > __alloc_pages: 4-order allocation failed.
> > __alloc_pages: 3-order allocation failed.
> > __alloc_pages: 2-order allocation failed.
> > __alloc_pages: 5-order allocation failed.
> > 
> > Any ideas?
> 
> I'm getting __alloc_pages: 7-order allocation failed.
> all the time in 2.4.0-test9 on my "pIII (Katmai)".. kernel's
> compiled with 2.95.2 + bounds, without -fbounds-checking

It means something in the system is trying to allocate a
large continuous area of memory that isn't available...

The printk is basically a debug output indicating that we
don't have the large physically contiguous area available
that's being requested.

Basically everything bigger than order-1 (2 contiguous
pages) is unreliable at runtime. Orders 2 and 3 should
usually be available (if you only allocate very few of
them) and higher orders should not be relied upon.

If somebody is seeing a lot of these messages, it means
that some driver in the system is asking unreasonable
things from the VM subsystem ;)

(and buffer allocations are failing)

regards,

Rik
--
"What you're running that piece of shit Gnome?!?!"
       -- Miguel de Icaza, UKUUG 2000

http://www.conectiva.com/		http://www.surriel.com/

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