From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1763657AbZEHVCE (ORCPT ); Fri, 8 May 2009 17:02:04 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757233AbZEHVBy (ORCPT ); Fri, 8 May 2009 17:01:54 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:48386 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757194AbZEHVBx (ORCPT ); Fri, 8 May 2009 17:01:53 -0400 Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 13:56:32 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Pekka Enberg Cc: gorcunov@openvz.org, kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com, mel@csn.ul.ie, cl@linux-foundation.org, riel@redhat.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mingo@elte.hu, rientjes@google.com Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] mm: Introduce GFP_PANIC for early-boot allocations Message-Id: <20090508135632.9c041339.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <1241795428.28600.60.camel@penberg-laptop> References: <1241795428.28600.60.camel@penberg-laptop> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.4 (GTK+ 2.8.20; i486-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 08 May 2009 18:10:28 +0300 Pekka Enberg wrote: > +#define GFP_PANIC (__GFP_NOFAIL | __GFP_NORETRY) urgh, you have to be kidding me. This significantly worsens complexity and risk in core MM and it's just yuk. I think we can justify pulling such dopey party tricks to save pageframe space, or bits in page.flags and such. But just to save a scrap of memory which would have been released during boot anwyay? Don't think so. I'd suggest panic_if_null(). Or just leave everything alone - it's hardly a pressing problem.