Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:13:50 -0600 | From | Robert Hancock <> | Subject | Re: VM/networking crash cause #1: page allocation failure (order:1, GFP_ATOMIC) |
| |
Frank van Maarseveen wrote: > For quite some time I'm seeing occasional lockups spread over 50 different > machines I'm maintaining. Symptom: a page allocation failure with order:1, > GFP_ATOMIC, while there is plenty of memory, as it seems (lots of free > pages, almost no swap used) followed by a lockup (everything dead). I've > collected all (12) crash cases which occurred the last 10 weeks on 50 > machines total (i.e. 1 crash every 41 weeks on average). The kernel > messages are summarized to show the interesting part (IMO) they have > in common. Over the years this has become the crash cause #1 for stable > kernels for me (fglrx doesn't count ;). > > One note: I suspect that reporting a GFP_ATOMIC allocation failure in an > network driver via that same driver (netconsole) may not be the smartest > thing to do and this could be responsible for the lockup itself. However, > the initial page allocation failure remains and I'm not sure how to > address that problem. > > I still think the issue is memory fragmentation but if so, it looks > a bit extreme to me: One system with 2GB of ram crashed after a day, > merely running a couple of TCP server programs. All systems have either > 1 or 2GB ram and at least 1G of (merely unused) swap.
These are all order-1 allocations for received network packets that need to be allocated out of low memory (assuming you're using a 32-bit kernel), so it's quite possible for them to fail on occasion. (Are you using jumbo frames?)
That should not be causing a lockup though.. the received packet should just get dropped.
-- Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada To email, remove "nospam" from hancockr@nospamshaw.ca Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |