Re: upcoming kerneloops.org item: get_page_from_freelist

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Sun, 28 Jun 2009, Pavel Machek wrote:
> 
> Ok, so we should re-add that 4MB buffer to suspend, so that
> allocations work even during that, right?

Pavel, you really are a one-trick pony, aren't you?

Give it up. Return to your pet worry when there are any actual reports. As 
you have been told several times.

The _other_ part of memory management that you and Andrew seem to be 
ignoring is that it's very robust, and keeps extra memory around, and just 
generally does the right thing. We don't generally pre-allocate anything, 
because we don't need to.

Almost the _only_ way to run out of memory is to have tons and tons of 
dirty pages around. Yes, it can happen. But if it happens, you're almost 
guaranteed to be screwed anyway. The whole VM is designed around the 
notion that most of memory is just clean caches, and it's designed around 
that simply because if it's not true, the VM freedom is so small that 
there's not a lot a VM can reasonably do.

		Linus