When calculating amount of dirtyable memory, min_free_kbytes should be subtracted because it is not intended for dirty pages. Using an "extern int" because that is the only interface to some such sysctl values. (This patch does not solve the PAE OOM issue.) Paul Szabo psz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/psz/ School of Mathematics and Statistics University of Sydney Australia Reported-by: Paul Szabo <psz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Reference: http://bugs.debian.org/695182 Signed-off-by: Paul Szabo <psz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- mm/page-writeback.c.old 2012-12-06 22:20:40.000000000 +1100 +++ mm/page-writeback.c 2013-01-21 13:57:05.000000000 +1100 @@ -343,12 +343,16 @@ unsigned long determine_dirtyable_memory(void) { unsigned long x; + extern int min_free_kbytes; x = global_page_state(NR_FREE_PAGES) + global_reclaimable_pages(); if (!vm_highmem_is_dirtyable) x -= highmem_dirtyable_memory(x); + /* Subtract min_free_kbytes */ + x -= min(x, min_free_kbytes >> (PAGE_SHIFT - 10)); + return x + 1; /* Ensure that we never return 0 */ } -- 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/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>