linux-kernel - Re: [ 101/175] mm: vmscan: forcibly scan highmem if there are too many buffer

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Date:	Thu, 5 Apr 2012 13:31:53 -0700
From:	Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>
To:	Ben Hutchings <ben@...adent.org.uk>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, stable@...r.kernel.org,
	torvalds@...ux-foundation.org, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk, Stuart Foster <smf.linux@...world.com>,
	Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
	Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>,
	Nikola Ciprich <nikola.ciprich@...uxbox.cz>,
	Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [ 101/175] mm: vmscan: forcibly scan highmem if there are too
 many buffer_heads pinning highmem

Sorry for the slow response. I was at LSF/MM and still at Collaboration
Summit and not keeping up with mail.

On Tue, Apr 03, 2012 at 04:01:33AM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:

> On Fri, 2012-03-30 at 12:50 -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> > 3.3-stable review patch.  If anyone has any objections, please let me know.
> > 
> > ------------------
> > 
> > From: Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>
> > 
> > commit cc715d99e529d470dde2f33a6614f255adea71f3 upstream.
> > 
> > Stuart Foster reported on bugzilla that copying large amounts of data
> > from NTFS caused an OOM kill on 32-bit X86 with 16G of memory.  Andrew
> > Morton correctly identified that the problem was NTFS was using 512
> > blocks meaning each page had 8 buffer_heads in low memory pinning it.
> 
> I notice that this was not applied to 3.0.26 or 3.2.14.
> 

True.

> [...]
> > Addresses https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42578
> [...]
> 
> but this bug was reported against 3.1.9, so the fix is presumably needed
> for 3.2 at least.
> 
> Presumably the upstream change doesn't apply cleanly and would need to
> be backported.  Is anyone planning to do that?
> 

It probably does not apply cleanly and considering how the bug is
triggered I was not treating it as a high priority. Nikola Ciprich
(added to cc) had said that he might try backporting it and I would
review the result. I have not heard anything since. I can take a look at
backporting it next week if it is considered a common problem.

-- 
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs
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