Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753643AbYLAXUH (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Dec 2008 18:20:07 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751828AbYLAXT4 (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Dec 2008 18:19:56 -0500 Received: from extu-mxob-1.symantec.com ([216.10.194.28]:48571 "EHLO extu-mxob-1.symantec.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751139AbYLAXT4 (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Dec 2008 18:19:56 -0500 Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 23:19:50 +0000 (GMT) From: Hugh Dickins X-X-Sender: hugh@blonde.anvils To: Christoph Lameter cc: Andrew Morton , Nick Piggin , Dave Jones , Arjan van de Ven , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/8] badpage: keep any bad page out of circulation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1322 Lines: 32 On Mon, 1 Dec 2008, Christoph Lameter wrote: > On Mon, 1 Dec 2008, Hugh Dickins wrote: > > > Until now the bad_page() checkers have special-cased PageReserved, keeping > > those pages out of circulation thereafter. Now extend the special case to > > all: we want to keep ANY page with bad state out of circulation - the > > "free" page may well be in use by something. > > If I screw up with a VM patch Oh, perish the thought! > then my machine will now die because of OOM > instead of letting me shutdown and reboot? If you screw up so royally as to allocate every page in the machine and free it with bad state, yes, that's indeed the way it will tend. Or, to the extent that you're relying on high orders and low zones, it will happen even sooner. Same as if you screw up and forget to free your pages. That's okay. In more normal cases you'll see the warnings before it's dead, and shutdown and reboot (hopefully a different kernel!) before it reaches that state. By the time your patches reach -mm, I'd hope you'll have weeded out the immediate OOM cases. Hugh -- 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/