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Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2002 13:25:13 -0700
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au>
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To: Teodor Iacob <Teodor.Iacob@astral.kappa.ro>
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: eth0: memory shortage
References: <20020703190931.GA13103@linux.kappa.ro>
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Teodor Iacob wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I keep getting these messages (like about twice a day) in the messages:
> eth0: memory shortage
> eth0: memory shortage
> eth1: memory shortage
> eth1: memory shortage
> 
> Any idea what could be the reason behind this?
> 

It means that the ethernet driver's Rx interrupt handler was not
able to allocate a new receive buffer - there wasn't enough memory
available.

The `kswapd' kernel thread is supposed to make memory available
for interrupt context but in this case it is obviously not keeping
up.

The driver recovers from the failed allocation, so things are OK.

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