Re: [PATCH] Remove OOM killer from try_to_free_pages / all_unreclaimable braindamage

Andrea Arcangeli
2004-11-06T01:51:44Z

On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 12:26:57PM +1100, Nick Piggin wrote:
> need to be performed and have no failure path. For example __GFP_REPEAT.

all allocations should have a failure path to avoid deadlocks. But in
the meantime __GFP_REPEAT is at least localizing the problematic places ;)

> I think maybe __GFP_REPEAT allocations at least should be able to
> cause an OOM. Not sure though.

probably it should because this is also a case where no fail path exists.

My point was only that when a fail path exists, it's more reliable not
to invoke the oom killer and let userspace handle the failure.

> Also, I think it would do the wrong thing on NUMA machines because
> that has a per-node kswapd.

yep.