Re: [patch -mm 8/9 v2] oom: avoid oom killer for lowmem allocations

[KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki]

On Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:03:23 -0800 (PST)
David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Feb 2010, KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki wrote:
> 
> > > > > I'll add this check to __alloc_pages_may_oom() for the !(gfp_mask & 
> > > > > __GFP_NOFAIL) path since we're all content with endlessly looping.
> > > > 
> > > > Thanks. Yes endlessly looping is far preferable to randomly oopsing
> > > > or corrupting memory.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Here's the new patch for your consideration.
> > > 
> > 
> > Then, can we take kdump in this endlessly looping situaton ?
> > 
> > panic_on_oom=always + kdump can do that. 
> > 
> 
> The endless loop is only helpful if something is going to free memory 
> external to the current page allocation: either another task with 
> __GFP_WAIT | __GFP_FS that invokes the oom killer, a task that frees 
> memory, or a task that exits.
> 
> The most notable endless loop in the page allocator is the one when a task 
> has been oom killed, gets access to memory reserves, and then cannot find 
> a page for a __GFP_NOFAIL allocation:
> 
> 	do {
> 		page = get_page_from_freelist(gfp_mask, nodemask, order,
> 			zonelist, high_zoneidx, ALLOC_NO_WATERMARKS,
> 			preferred_zone, migratetype);
> 
> 		if (!page && gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL)
> 			congestion_wait(BLK_RW_ASYNC, HZ/50);
> 	} while (!page && (gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL));
> 
> We don't expect any such allocations to happen during the exit path, but 
> we could probably find some in the fs layer.
> 
> I don't want to check sysctl_panic_on_oom in the page allocator because it 
> would start panicking the machine unnecessarily for the integrity 
> metadata GFP_NOIO | __GFP_NOFAIL allocation, for any 
> order > PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER, or for users who can't lock the zonelist 
> for oom kill that wouldn't have panicked before.
> 

Then, why don't you check higzone_idx in oom_kill.c

Thanks,
-Kame

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