Re: Non-e1000, 2.6.9 page allocation failures with OSS/audio.

From: Marcelo Tosatti
Date: Fri Nov 12 2004 - 09:21:53 EST


On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 11:18:01PM +1100, Nick Piggin wrote:
> Justin Piszcz wrote:
> >The other page allocation failures were due to the e1000+TSO
> >segmentation offload issue.
> >
> >I use OSS sound drivers with 2.6.9.
> >
> >Here are the options I use and have been using for quite some time
> >without error:
> >
> >1] <*> Open Sound System (DEPRECATED)
> >2] <*> OSS sound modules
> >3] [*] Verbose initialisation
> >4] [*] Persistent DMA buffers
> >5] <*> Crystal CS4232 based (PnP) cards
> >
> >My LILO append line as is follows:
> >append="cs4232=0x530,5,1,0,388,5 mce video=atyfb:1600x1200-16@60"
> >
> >What happened to the page allocation / memory subsystem in 2.6.9?
> >I do not recall getting these with 2.6.4, 2.6.5, 2.6.6, 2.6.7, 2.6.8 or
> >2.6.8.1.
> >
>
> These failures are actually harmless and not entirely unexpected.
> That path should tell the allocator not to produce warnings on
> failure.
>
> The issue is being actively worked on in the -mm kernels, and the
> important stuff should get into 2.6.10.
>
> However, earlier kernels had a bug that prevented a large amount
> of ZONE_DMA memory from being allocated by GFP_KERNEL allocations
> which is probably why this particular path hasn't been a problem
> before. This actually won't be completely reverted in 2.6.10, however
> the correct way to get this behaviour is with "lower zone protection"
> which Andrea had been working on... so things may happen soon.

Well, the zone->protection code is in the tree but disable by default
(Andrea's lowmem_reserve effectively enables/adjusts it, apart from changing
"protection" to "lowmem_reserve", etc).

The zone protection setup code doesnt configure any protection
for DMA zone with reference to GFP_KERNEL allocations.
It only sets up protection with reference to HIGH zone, I think.

There must be some reasoning to explain why its disable now?

Who wrote the zone->protection code, Andrew?
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