Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1757667AbZFXRzu (ORCPT ); Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:55:50 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756810AbZFXRzg (ORCPT ); Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:55:36 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:43530 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755326AbZFXRzf (ORCPT ); Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:55:35 -0400 Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:55:17 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Pekka Enberg Cc: Arjan van de Ven , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@linux-foundation.org, Christoph Lameter , Nick Piggin Subject: Re: upcoming kerneloops.org item: get_page_from_freelist Message-Id: <20090624105517.904f93da.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <84144f020906240955h5e26a248scc61439c1ca36023@mail.gmail.com> References: <20090624080753.4f677847@infradead.org> <20090624094622.d0b0fd82.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <84144f020906240955h5e26a248scc61439c1ca36023@mail.gmail.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.4.8 (GTK+ 2.12.5; x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1263 Lines: 27 On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:55:24 +0300 Pekka Enberg wrote: > On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 7:46 PM, Andrew Morton wrote: > > Well yes. __Using GFP_NOFAIL on a higher-order allocation is bad. __This > > patch is there to find, name, shame, blame and hopefully fix callers. > > > > A fix for cxgb3 is in the works. __slub's design is a big problem. > > > > But we'll probably have to revert it for 2.6.31 :( > > How is SLUB's design a problem here? Can't we just clear GFP_NOFAIL > from the higher order allocation and thus force GFP_NOFAIL allocations > to use the minimum required order? That could then lead to the __GFP_NOFAIL allocation attempt returning NULL. But the callers cannot handle that and probably don't even test for it - this is why they used __GFP_NOFAIL. I dunno. Mabe we should just remove __GFP_NOFAIL and convert callers back to open-coded infinite retry loops. Hardly an improvement, but it at least would stop people naively using __GFP_NOFAIL. -- 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/