Re: [Question] race condition in mm/page_alloc.c regarding page->lru?

Previous message: [thread] [date] [author]
Next message: [thread] [date] [author]
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arve_Hj=F8nnev=E5g?=
Date: Friday, April 2, 2010 - 5:59 pm

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 2:48 AM, Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> wrote:

The high order allocation that caused problems was the first level
page table for each process. Each time a new process started the
kernel would empty the entire page cache to create contiguous free
memory. With the reserved pageblock mostly full (fixed by the second
patch) this contiguous memory would then almost immediately get used
for low order allocations, so the same problem starts again when the
next process starts. I agree this patch does not fix the problem, but
it does improve things when the problem hits. I have not seen a device
in this situation with the second patch applied, but I did not remove
the first patch in case the reserved pageblock fills up.


I think this happens by default on arm. The kernel starts at offset
0x8000 to leave room for boot parameters, and in recent kernel
versions (>~2.6.26-29) this memory is freed.


I can fix this if you want the patch in mainline. I was not sure it
was acceptable since will slow down boot on all systems, even where it
is not needed.




-- 
Arve Hjønnevåg
--
Previous message: [thread] [date] [author]
Next message: [thread] [date] [author]

Messages in current thread:
Re: [Question] race condition in mm/page_alloc.c regarding ..., KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki, (Thu Apr 1, 10:04 pm)
Re: [Question] race condition in mm/page_alloc.c regarding ..., =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arve_ ..., (Fri Apr 2, 5:59 pm)
[PATCH] mm: Check if any page in a pageblock is reserved b ..., =?UTF-8?q?Arve=20Hj= ..., (Mon Apr 5, 8:09 pm)
[No subject], Mel Gorman, (Tue Apr 6, 8:11 am)