Re: [PATCH] dma/pool: do not complain if DMA pool is not allocated

From: Christoph Hellwig
Date: Fri Mar 25 2022 - 12:49:03 EST


On Fri, Mar 25, 2022 at 01:58:42PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> Dang, I have just realized that I have misread the boot log and it has
> turned out that a674e48c5443 is covering my situation because the
> allocation failure message says:
>
> Node 0 DMA free:0kB boost:0kB min:0kB low:0kB high:0kB reserved_highatomic:0KB active_anon:0kB inactive_anon:0kB active_file:0kB inactive_file:0kB unevictable:0kB writepending:0kB present:636kB managed:0kB mlocked:0kB bounce:0kB free_pcp:0kB local_pcp:0kB free_cma:0kB

As in your report is from a kernel that does not have a674e48c5443
yet?

>
> I thought there are only few pages in the managed by the DMA zone. This
> is still theoretically possible so I think __GFP_NOWARN makes sense here
> but it would require to change the patch description.
>
> Is this really worth it?

In general I think for kernels where we need the pool and can't allocate
it, a warning is very useful. We just shouldn't spew it when there is
no need for the pool to start with.