[bug] shrink_slab shrinkersize handling

[solmac john <johnsolmac@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

During mm performance testing sometimes I observed below kernel messages

[   80.776000] shrink_slab: ashmem_shrink+0x0/0x114 negative objects to delete nr=-2133936901
[   80.784000] shrink_slab: ashmem_shrink+0x0/0x114 negative objects to delete nr=-2139256767
[   80.796000] shrink_slab: ashmem_shrink+0x0/0x114 negative objects to delete nr=-2079333971
[   80.804000] shrink_slab: ashmem_shrink+0x0/0x114 negative objects to delete nr=-2096156269
[   80.812000] shrink_slab: ashmem_shrink+0x0/0x114 negative objects to delete nr=-20658392   

 After debugging is I fount these prints from mm/vmscan.c

Kernel Error msg point

   unsigned long total_scan;

               unsigned long max_pass;

                max_pass = do_shrinker_shrink(shrinker, shrink, 0);

                delta = (4 * nr_pages_scanned) / shrinker->seeks;

                delta *= max_pass;

                do_div(delta, lru_pages + 1);

                shrinker->nr += delta;

                if (shrinker->nr < 0) {

                        printk(KERN_ERR "shrink_slab: %pF negative objects to "

                               "delete nr=%ld\n",

                               shrinker->shrink, shrinker->nr);

                        shrinker->nr = max_pass;

                }

 

 

I found one patch  http://lkml.org/lkml/2011/8/22/80    for this fix

Please let me know reason why I am getting above error and above is really fix for this problem.  ?

I am working on ARM cortex A9  linux-3.0.20 kernel.

 

Thanks,

John