Re: Commenting out out_of_memory() function in __alloc_pages()

Robert Hancock
2006-07-08T18:06:13Z

Abu M. Muttalib wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am getting the Out of memory.
>
> To circumvent the problem, I have commented the call to "out_of_memory(),
> and replaced "goto restart" with "goto nopage".
>
> At "nopage:" lable I have added a call to "schedule()" and then "return
> NULL" after "schedule()".

Bad idea - in the configuration you have, the system may need the
out-of-memory killer to free up memory, otherwise the system can
deadlock due to all memory being exhausted.

>
> I tried the modified kernel with a test application, the test application is
> mallocing memory in a loop. Unlike as expected the process gets killed. On
> second run of the same application I am getting the page allocation failure
> as expected but subsequently the system hangs.
>
> I am attaching the test application and the log herewith.
>
> I am getting this exception with kernel 2.6.13. With kernel
> 2.4.19-rmka7-pxa1 there was no problem.
>
> Why its so? What can I do to alleviate the OOM problem?

Please see Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting in the kernel source tree.

--
Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To email, remove "nospam" from hancockr@nospamshaw.ca
Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/