Re: the new VM

Andrea Arcangeli
2000-09-25T15:48:15Z

On Mon, Sep 25, 2000 at 05:16:06PM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> situation is just 1% RAM away from the 'root cannot log in', situation.

The root cannot log in is a little different. Just think that in the "root
cannot log in" you only need to press SYSRQ+E (or as worse +I).

If all tasks in the systems are hanging into the GFP loop SYSRQ+I won't solve
the deadlock.

Ok you can add a signal check in the memory balancing code but that looks an
ugly hack that shows the difference between the two cases (the one Alan pointed
out is real deadlock, the current one is kind of live lock that can go away any
time, while the deadlock can reach the point where it can't be recovered
without an hack from an irq somewhere).

Andrea