From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list xfs); Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:54:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cuda.sgi.com ([192.48.176.15]) by oss.sgi.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11/SuSE Linux 0.7) with ESMTP id m76JsM14006847 for ; Wed, 6 Aug 2008 12:54:22 -0700 Message-ID: <489A01B0.5050606@sandeen.net> Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:55:28 -0500 From: Eric Sandeen MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: TAKE 981498 - use KM_MAYFAIL in xfs_mountfs References: <20080806054121.CB2F258C52A4@chook.melbourne.sgi.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: xfs-bounce@oss.sgi.com Errors-to: xfs-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: xfs To: Bhagi rathi Cc: Lachlan McIlroy , sgi.bugs.xfs@engr.sgi.com, xfs@oss.sgi.com Bhagi rathi wrote: > Why are we going to block for ever? Mounting a file-system > requires in-core log space buffers, reading of other buffers > which needs allocation of memory greater than per ag > structures. > > I am trying to understand why xfs_perag_t? Mount/Unmount > are not frequent activities, it is better for them to succeed > if operating system can allocate memory and take them > forward. But that's the big if, right? If the system is so starved that you can't get this memory to even start the mount process, I'm sure it's better to fail the mount with -ENOMEM than to add to the current system memory stress. In general KM_MAYFAIL sounds like a good plan when you can handle the failure gracefully, I think. -Eric