Re: [PATCH] virtio: use __GFP_NOWARN for try_fill_recv invirtnet_poll

From: Michal Hocko
Date: Tue Feb 15 2011 - 07:43:05 EST


On Tue 15-02-11 21:39:03, Rusty Russell wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:55:50 pm Michal Hocko wrote:
> > On Tue 15-02-11 20:41:29, Rusty Russell wrote:
> > > On Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:05:27 pm Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > > we have started seeing a lot of allocator messages complaining about
> > > > failed allocations from virtnet_poll in soft IRQ. Could you consider the
> > > > following patch, please?
> > >
> > > Do we really want to silence this? Isn't warning about it kind of the
> > > point? Your network is probably sucking if this happens...
> >
> > What can user do about it? Is the low level memory allocator message
> > very much usefull for him? Maybe we can add a printk_once in the fail
> > path with some more useful and virtio specific message.
>
> That's an argument against ever printing any message.

Well, honestly, I do not see much point for this message but it is there
for ages so it maybe it is valueable for somebody...

>
> What we need to know is why does this happen with virtio_net and not other
> cards?

The machine just happened to be short on memory due to a strong memory
pressure.

> If it happens to them too, and they silently fall back, all good.
>
> I want to make sure we're not papering over a real problem...
>
> Thanks,
> Rusty.

--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs
SUSE LINUX s.r.o.
Lihovarska 1060/12
190 00 Praha 9
Czech Republic
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