linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH -mm 5/8] slab: remove kmem_cache

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Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.10.1406021014140.2987@gentwo.org>
Date:	Mon, 2 Jun 2014 10:16:03 -0500 (CDT)
From:	Christoph Lameter <cl@...two.org>
To:	Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov@...allels.com>
cc:	akpm@...ux-foundation.org, hannes@...xchg.org, mhocko@...e.cz,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH -mm 5/8] slab: remove kmem_cache_shrink retval

On Sat, 31 May 2014, Vladimir Davydov wrote:

> > Well slub returns an error code if it fails
>
> ... to sort slabs by the nubmer of objects in use, which is not even
> implied by the function declaration. Why can *shrinking*, which is what
> kmem_cache_shrink must do at first place, ever fail?

Because there is a memory allocation failure. Or there may be other
processes going on that prevent shrinking. F.e. We may want to merge a
patchset that does defragmentation of slabs at some point.

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