Re: Linux-2.4.5

Linus Torvalds
2001-05-26T15:27:45Z

On Sat, 26 May 2001, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
>
> I don't see where you fixed the deadlock in create_buffers, if you did
> please show me which line of code is supposed to do that, I show you
> below which lines of code in my patch should fix the wait_event deadlock
> in create_buffers:

Andrea, look at the page_alloc() path, and the "don't loop forever if
__GFP_IO isn't set and we're not making progress". That looks entirely
sane.

It's the other limiting that I don't think really addresses the problem
(and I like your patch that removes some more magic limits - I suspect the
proper fix is the 5 lines from Rik's patch in page_alloc.c, and your patch
together - amybody mind testing that out?)

Oh, and I still _do_ think that we should rename the silly "async" flag as
"can_do_io", and then use that to determine whether to do SLAB_KERNEL or
SLAB_BUFFER. That would make more things able to do IO, which in turn
should help balance things out.

Linus "leaving for the airport" Torvalds