Re: Fixing page allocation failure

[Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>]

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