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From: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
To: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>,
	kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: vm.txt: document min_free_pages as critical for correctness
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 11:49:20 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20071004094920.GA407@elf.ucw.cz> (raw)


min_free_pages is critical for correctness, document it as such.

Signed-off-by: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>

index a0ccc5b..e460c19 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -111,6 +111,12 @@ of kilobytes free.  The VM uses this num
 value for each lowmem zone in the system.  Each lowmem zone gets 
 a number of reserved free pages based proportionally on its size.
 
+Some minimal ammount of memory is needed to satisfy PF_MEMALLOC
+allocations; if you set this to lower than 1024KB, your system will
+become subtly broken, and prone to deadlock under high loads.
+
+Setting this too high will OOM your machine instantly.
+
 ==============================================================
 
 percpu_pagelist_fraction


-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

                 reply	other threads:[~2007-10-04  9:51 UTC|newest]

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