From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262748AbUKRMK7 (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:10:59 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262749AbUKRMK7 (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:10:59 -0500 Received: from smtp201.mail.sc5.yahoo.com ([216.136.129.91]:19891 "HELO smtp201.mail.sc5.yahoo.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S262748AbUKRMKx (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:10:53 -0500 Message-ID: <419C9144.2080605@yahoo.com.au> Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 23:10:44 +1100 From: Nick Piggin User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040820 Debian/1.7.2-4 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Morten W. Petersen" CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Fixing page allocation failure References: <419C8756.3080709@nidelven-it.no> In-Reply-To: <419C8756.3080709@nidelven-it.no> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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