Re: [PATCH] oom killer (Core)

[Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 08:36:14AM -0800, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 03:28:54AM +0100, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > +	if (mm == &init_mm) {
> > +		mmput(mm);
> > +		return NULL;
> > +	}
> 
> On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 03:28:54AM +0100, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > +	if (PTR_ERR(p) == -1UL)
> > +		goto out;
> > +
> >  	/* Found nothing?!?! Either we hang forever, or we panic. */
> >  	if (!p) {
> > +		read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
> >  		show_free_areas();
> >  		panic("Out of memory and no killable processes...\n");
> >  	}
> 
> Maybe the mm == &init_mm case should return an ERR_PTR also, as that is
> a sign of a transient error, not cause for a hard panic.

It can't be a transient error as far as I can tell, it's just like the
issue of alloc_pages returning NULL (and potentially scheduling first)
before mounting the root fs.