Hi Steven, On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 2:42 PM, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, 30 Mar 2018 17:30:31 -0400 > Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> I'll take a look at si_mem_available() that Joel suggested and see if >> we can make that work. > > Wow, this appears to work great! Joel and Zhaoyang, can you test this? > > -- Steve > > diff --git a/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c b/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c > index a2fd3893cc02..32a803626ee2 100644 > --- a/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c > +++ b/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c > @@ -1164,6 +1164,11 @@ static int __rb_allocate_pages(long nr_pages, struct list_head *pages, int cpu) > struct buffer_page *bpage, *tmp; > long i; > > + /* Check if the available memory is there first */ > + i = si_mem_available(); > + if (i < nr_pages) Does it make sense to add a small margin here so that after ftrace finishes allocating, we still have some memory left for the system? But then then we have to define a magic number :-| > + return -ENOMEM; > + I tested in Qemu with 1GB memory, I am always able to get it to fail allocation even without this patch without causing an OOM. Maybe I am not running enough allocations in parallel or something :) The patch you shared using si_mem_available is working since I'm able to allocate till the end without a page allocation failure: bash-4.3# echo 237800 > /d/tracing/buffer_size_kb bash: echo: write error: Cannot allocate memory bash-4.3# echo 237700 > /d/tracing/buffer_size_kb bash-4.3# free -m total used free shared buffers Mem: 985 977 7 10 0 -/+ buffers: 977 7 Swap: 0 0 0 bash-4.3# I think this patch is still good to have, since IMO we should not go and get page allocation failure (even if its a non-OOM) and subsequent stack dump from mm's allocator, if we can avoid it. Tested-by: Joel Fernandes <joelaf@xxxxxxxxxx> thanks, - Joel