There were some reports about processes getting stalled for very long periods of time in compaction. The bulk of this problem turned out to be due to an accounting error wherby the isolated count could go negative but only noticed by UP builds. This series is the useful patches (not all mine) that came out of the related discussions that have not been merged to -mm already. All these patches should be considered for -stable 2.6.38 and 2.6.39. Hence, Andrea's introduction of __page_count() is missing from this series because while it's worth merging, it's not for -stable. Patch 1 is the primary fix for a problem where the isolated count could go negative on one zone and remain elevated on another. Patch 2 notes that the linear scanner in vmscan.c cannot safely use page_count because it could be scanning a tail page. Patch 3 fixes memory failure accounting of isolated pages Patch 4 fixes a problem whereby asynchronous callers to compaction can still stall in too_many_isolated when it should just fail the allocation. Re-verification from testers that these patches really do fix their problems would be appreciated. Even if hangs disappear, please confirm that the values for nr_isolated_anon and nr_isolated_file in *both* /proc/zoneinfo and /proc/vmstat are sensible (i.e. usually zero). mm/compaction.c | 41 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------ mm/memory-failure.c | 4 +++- mm/vmscan.c | 16 ++++++++++++++-- 3 files changed, 52 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) -- 1.7.3.4 -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>