Yep. Not a Good Thing!
> I do not have a clean 2.1.42 tree to apply the patch to, but from reading
> the patch, mm/page_alloc.c/__get_free_page() will call try_to_free_page()
> if the pri is GFP_ATOMIC and the free-pool cannot honour the request..
> This is a big NO as the functions called by try_to_free_page() can block -
> hence the panics!
> Perhaps someone with a tree who can apply the mmap-diff, can make a
> patch for this change (and check my suggested mod). Hopefully the orignal
> author will pick this up....
I've made the change you suggested (can provide unified diffs if
there's any desire). It crashed during my quicky stress test (ftp
Xemacs-20 while simultaneously untarring and rm'ing four 2.1.x kernel
trees) without any errors, but has otherwise been stable so far (~12
hours).
later,
chris
-- Chris Ricker gt1355b@prism.gatech.edu