From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754987AbZENU5M (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 May 2009 16:57:12 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753601AbZENU45 (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 May 2009 16:56:57 -0400 Received: from atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz ([195.113.26.193]:48511 "EHLO atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753499AbZENU44 (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 May 2009 16:56:56 -0400 Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 22:56:00 +0200 From: Pavel Machek To: Christoph Lameter Cc: David Rientjes , Andrew Morton , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Nick Piggin , Mel Gorman , Peter Ziljstra , Dave Hansen , San Mehat , Arve Hj?nnev?g , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Misleading OOM messages Message-ID: <20090514205600.GA14741@elf.ucw.cz> References: <20090514092909.GG1365@ucw.cz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Warning: Reading this can be dangerous to your mental health. User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu 2009-05-14 15:46:50, Christoph Lameter wrote: > On Thu, 14 May 2009, Pavel Machek wrote: > > > It can be 'low on memory' if you play with mlock() a bit. > > But that is a reclaim failure becuase of mlocking pages. > > > It is out of memory if you run out of swap (or have no swap to begin with). > > That is a swap config issue. Well, many machines are _designed_ to run without swap. Swapping on flash is considered bad. > > I believe message is often correct. What message would you suggest? > > "Failure to reclaim memory" That is not a helpful message, I'm afraid. What about "Memory allocation failure" ? "Out of memory, or failed to allocate memory due to temporary spike"? Pavel -- (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html