Re: What to expect with the 2.6 VM

Hugh Dickins
2003-07-01T10:45:46Z

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de> wrote:
> >
> > described this way it sounds like NOFAIL imply a deadlock condition.
>
> NOFAIL is what 2.4 has always done, and has the deadlock opportunities
> which you mention. The other modes allow the caller to say "don't try
> forever".

__GFP_NOFAIL is also very badly named: patently it can and does fail,
when PF_MEMALLOC or PF_MEMDIE or not __GFP_WAIT. Or is the idea that
its users might as well oops when it does fail? Should its users be
changed to use the less perniciously named __GFP_REPEAT, or should
__alloc_pages be changed to deadlock more thoroughly?

Hugh