Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Tue, 9 Oct 2001 11:01:31 -0200 (BRST) | From | Marcelo Tosatti <> | Subject | Re: pre6 VM issues |
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On Tue, 9 Oct 2001, BALBIR SINGH wrote:
> Most of the traditional unices maintained a pool for each subsystem > (this is really useful when u have the memory to spare), so not matter > what they use memory only from their pool (and if needed peek outside), > but nobody else used the memory from the pool. > > I have seen cases where, I have run out of physical memory on my system, > so I try to log in using the serial console, but since the serial driver > does get_free_page (this most likely fails) and the driver complains back. > So, I had suggested a while back that important subsystems should maintain > their own pool (it will take a new thread to discuss the right size of > each pool). > > Why can't Linux follow the same approach? especially on systems with a lot > of memory.
There is nothing which avoids us from doing that (there is one reserved pool I remeber right now: the highmem bounce buffering pool, but that one is a special case due to the way Linux does IO in high memory and its only needed on _real_ emergencies --- it will be removed in 2.5, I hope).
In general, its a better approach to share the memory and have a unified pool. If a given subsystem is not using its own "reversed" memory, another subsystems can use it.
The problem we are seeing now can be fixed even without the reserved pools.
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