Re: Fixing page allocation failure

Nick Piggin
2004-11-18T12:10:59Z

Morten W. Petersen wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have a server that a couple of times each day squirts out messages
> about page allocation failures (python: page allocation failure.
> order:3, mode:0x20). What's the reason for this, and could it affect
> the stability of the box?
>
> The server that squirts these messages just crashed, for no apparent
> reason, so that's why I'm wondering. It's a UML box. Also, I'm
> wondering, are there any howto's for tweaking /proc settings so that the
> machine becomes more stable? Are there any settings for increasing the
> verbosity of the kernel log so that the reason for a server crashing is
> easier to find?
>
> Thanks in advance, and please CC me any replies :)
>
> Regards,
>
> Morten

Yeah you can increase /proc/sys/vm/min_free_kbytes to help the problem.

There is a possibly better solution in the -mm kernels which should get
merged into 2.6 sooner or later - but there is still no way to guarantee
safety from allocation failures. If they cause crashes then that is a
bug, so report them here with traces and a description of the workload
and system hardware, etc.

Thanks
Nick