linux-kernel - Re: [Bug #13319] Page allocation failures with b43 and p54usb

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Message-ID: <4A109AC5.7040008@lwfinger.net>
Date:	Sun, 17 May 2009 18:16:21 -0500
From:	Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@...inger.net>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
CC:	"Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@...k.pl>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Kernel Testers List <kernel-testers@...r.kernel.org>,
	Johannes Berg <johannes@...solutions.net>,
	linux-wireless@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [Bug #13319] Page allocation failures with b43 and p54usb

Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> Well..  order-1 GFP_ATOMIC allocations are unreliable.  The networking
> code should hanlde the situation and recover.  I assume that is
> happening in this case?

Yes, the driver has recovered in all cases so far.

> Perhaps we did something in that code after 2.6.29 which increased the
> frequency of the order-1 allocation attempts?  Maybe earlier kernels
> used order-0 all the time?  Those are much more reliable.

I think something happened to change the allocation as I never saw these O(1)
failures before with these particular drivers. I put in a few test printk's and
the buffers were 700-800 bytes long, and I would not expect them to require more
than an O(0) allocation.

I pushed 2.6.30-rc6 hard for ~12 hours without any recurrence of the problem.
Given the relative infrequency of the error, this certainly does not indicate a
fix in recent code. I will be trying to force it again.

Larry

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