MIPS and pci_alloc_consistent()?

[Shuanglin Wang <swang@mmc.atmel.com>]

I tried to use the pci_alloc_consistent() to allocate one-page  DMA'able
memory for my device driver.  But, when booting up the system, it
was always  failed to execute the pci_alloc_consistent() by showing
some memory errors.

I traced the code to the function __alloc_page() in the file mm/page_alloc.c, and found the system called  "wakeup_kswapd()".  But at that time,  the kswapd process pointer is a NULL pointer and the wakeup-related codes don't check the pointer is NULL or not,  so the system was stopped because of dereferencing the null pointer.

I'm working on a MIPS SEAD-2 board using Linux kernel 2.4.3 MIPS distrinution.
Anybody has some ideas about the problem?  Or are there other convenient methods to allocate DMA'able memory?

Thanks,

-- 
Shuanglin Wang
Atmel Multimedia & Communications
3800 Gateway Centre, Suite 311
Morrisville, NC 27560