On Tue, 25 Oct 2011, Mel Gorman wrote: > That said, it will be difficult to remember why checking __GFP_NOFAIL in > this case is necessary and someone might "optimitise" it away later. It > would be preferable if it was self-documenting. Maybe something like > this? (This is totally untested) > __GFP_NOFAIL _should_ be optimized away in this case because all he's passing is __GFP_WAIT | __GFP_NOFAIL. That doesn't make any sense unless all you want to do is livelock. __GFP_NOFAIL doesn't mean the page allocator would infinitely loop in all conditions. That's why GFP_ATOMIC | __GFP_NOFAIL actually fails, and I would argue that __GFP_WAIT | __GFP_NOFAIL should fail as well since it's the exact same condition except doesn't have access to the extra memory reserves. Suspend needs to either set __GFP_NORETRY to avoid the livelock if it's going to disable all means of memory reclaiming or freeing in the page allocator. Or, better yet, just make it GFP_NOWAIT. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. 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>