From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next-2.6 1/2] net: introduce
 __netdev_alloc_skb_ip_align
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:32:23 -0700 (PDT)
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From: Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@solarflare.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:57:08 +0100

> On Mon, 2011-07-11 at 23:52 +0200, Eric Dumazet wrote:
>> RX rings should use GFP_KERNEL allocations if possible, add
>> __netdev_alloc_skb_ip_align() helper to ease this.
> [...]
> 
> When it is possible, other than when starting an interface?  RX refill
> normally has to be done in NAPI context or at least synchronised with
> NAPI, so GFP_ATOMIC is required.  Not sure how much point there is in
> making a special case for the initial fill.

There is a point, because if this init case fails you lose the
interface entirely.

Whereas the other cases only cause the loss of a few packets.