From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751472AbWA1QmH (ORCPT ); Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:42:07 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751482AbWA1QmH (ORCPT ); Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:42:07 -0500 Received: from gprs189-60.eurotel.cz ([160.218.189.60]:11210 "EHLO amd.ucw.cz") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751472AbWA1QmG (ORCPT ); Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:42:06 -0500 Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 17:41:58 +0100 From: Pavel Machek To: Sridhar Samudrala Cc: Matthew Dobson , Paul Jackson , clameter@engr.sgi.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, andrea@suse.de, linux-mm@kvack.org Subject: Re: [patch 3/9] mempool - Make mempools NUMA aware Message-ID: <20060128164158.GD1858@elf.ucw.cz> References: <43D95A2E.4020002@us.ibm.com> <43D96633.4080900@us.ibm.com> <43D96A93.9000600@us.ibm.com> <20060127025126.c95f8002.pj@sgi.com> <43DAC222.4060805@us.ibm.com> <20060128081641.GB1605@elf.ucw.cz> <43DB9877.7020206@us.ibm.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <43DB9877.7020206@us.ibm.com> X-Warning: Reading this can be dangerous to your mental health. User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > >>I still think some sort of reserve pool > >>is necessary to give the networking stack a little breathing room when > >>under both memory pressure and network load. > >> > > > >"Lets throw some memory there and hope it does some good?" Eek? What > >about auditing/fixing the networking stack, instead? > > > The other reason we need a separate critical pool is to satifsy critical > GFP_KERNEL allocations > when we are in emergency. These are made in the send side and we cannot > block/sleep. If sending routines can work with constant ammount of memory, why use kmalloc at all? Anyway I thought we were talking receiving side earlier in the thread. Ouch and wait a moment. You claim that GFP_KERNEL allocations can't block/sleep? Of course they can, that's why they are GFP_KERNEL and not GFP_ATOMIC. Pavel -- Thanks, Sharp!