Re: vfork: out of memory, when there's plenty of swap free

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Sun, 14 Mar 1999 17:17:05 +0000 (GMT)


> Relying on 2 PAGES allocations _is_ broken. You can invent any prothesis
> you want, a single butterfly that does not behave as you believe all
> bufferflies should behave can defeat it, in my opinion that is not going
> to change on this topic.

You can reduce it to such a low probability of failure thats the situation
for failure of 2 page pairs is extremely unlikely to occur. Even a very
gently applied VM goal will ensure they almost aways do

> Btw, I donnot want to rely on 2 PAGES allocations having to succeed most
> of the time.

No argument. However because a lot drivers rely on the stack being DMAable
on X86 2.2 wasnt able to switch to a virtualised stack

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/