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Date:      Mon, 5 Mar 2007 21:30:22 +0200
From:      Kostik Belousov <kostikbel@gmail.com>
To:        Yar Tikhiy <yar@comp.chem.msu.su>
Cc:        stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: panic: kmem_malloc(16384): kmem_map too small: md-mounted /tmp filled up
Message-ID:  <20070305193022.GM10453@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua>
In-Reply-To: <20070305191714.GF57253@comp.chem.msu.su>
References:  <20070227205351.GA72597@ravenloft.kiev.ua> <20070305035945.GA71660@xor.obsecurity.org> <20070305132350.GB57253@comp.chem.msu.su> <200703051314.29902@aldan> <20070305191714.GF57253@comp.chem.msu.su>

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On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 10:17:14PM +0300, Yar Tikhiy wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 01:14:29PM -0500, Mikhail Teterin wrote:
> > On Monday 05 March 2007 08:23, Yar Tikhiy wrote:
> > =3D > How will it break them? =9Aswap backing only touches swap if ther=
e is
> > =3D > memory pressure, i.e. precisely the situation in which malloc bac=
king
> > =3D > will panic.
> > =3D=20
> > =3D I forgot that in BSD swap wouldn't be allocated in advance to its
> > =3D consumers. =9AThen removing the -M flag and making swap backing the
> > =3D default is a very sound choice. =9AThank you for correcting me.
> >=20
> > Yar, would you change the man-page's advice and the default, then?
>=20
> Yes, I'll be glad to if no objections arise until I finish updating
> my CURRENT machine, i.e., tomorrow. :-)
>=20
> > Someone still needs to look into the panic... Who would that be?
>=20
> Obviously, Mr(s). Someone. :-)
>=20
> The md case exposes a quite tangled nature of the problem.  Funnily
> enough, kernel malloc() cannot just fail in the case because it
> must not fail if called with M_WAITOK.  This means that the system
> has quite a rough choice:
>=20
> - put the requesting thread to sleep forever;
> - grow kmem_map, eventually sacrifice all RAM to the greedy thread
>   and die sooner or later;
> - panic immediately.
>=20
> If all malloc() callers in the kernel were ready to deal with
> allocation failure, the system could just tell the greedy thread
> to buzz off.  But too many kernel parts depend on malloc(M_WAITOK)
> never failing.  Perhaps it's the root of the problem.

Mark callers that are ready for M_WAITOK failure with some additional
flag, like M_FAILOK (feel free to propose meaningful name there).
At least malloc()-based md could then use it.

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