Re: [PATCH]: Remove PF_MEMDIE as it is redundant

[Juan Quintela <quintela@mandrakesoft.com>]

>>>>> "robert" == Robert Love <rml@tech9.net> writes:

robert> On Wed, 2003-01-08 at 17:47, Juan Quintela wrote:
>> PF_MEMDIE don't have any use in current kernels.  Please
>> remove, we only set it in one place, and there we also set
>> PF_MEMALLOC.  And we only test it in other place, and we also
>> test for PF_MEMALLOC.  This patch has existed in aa for some
>> quite time.

robert> I independently thought this same thing, and did a patch for 2.5 which
robert> had the same effect.

robert> I was reminded by better-VM-hackers-than-I that PF_MEMALLOC can be
robert> cleared in various paths so the PF_MEMDIE is required to ensure that the
robert> check in page_alloc.c is always true for OOM'ed tasks.

That is a nice theory, and I think that this could be true in the
past, but in 2.4.2X, PF_MEMDIE only appears in the two places that I
show, and it is completely redundant, look at the patch, we are just 
|-ing both PF_MEMALLOC and PF_MEMDIE and later we are &-ing against
the or of the two.  Use find & grep yourself if you don't believe me.

Later, Juan.

-- 
In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they 
are different -- Larry McVoy