On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 12:29 -0500, Joel Schopp wrote:
> > In reality, no and it would only happen if a caller had specified both
> > __GFP_USER and __GFP_KERNRCLM in the call to alloc_pages() or friends. It
> > makes *no* sense for someone to do this, but if they did, an oops would be
> > thrown during an interrupt. The alternative is to get rid of this last
> > element and put a BUG_ON() check before the spinlock is taken.
> >
> > This way, a stupid caller will damage the fragmentation strategy (which is
> > bad). The alternative, the kernel will call BUG() (which is bad). The
> > question is, which is worse?
> >
>
> If in the future we hypothetically have code that damages the fragmentation
> strategy we want to find it sooner rather than never. I'd rather some kernels
> BUG() than we have bugs which go unnoticed.
It isn't a bug. It's a normal
let-the-stupid-user-shoot-themselves-in-the-foot situation. Let's
explicitly document the fact that you can't pass both flags, then maybe
add a WARN_ON() or another printk. Or, we just fail the allocation.
Failing the allocation seems like the simplest and most effective
solution. A developer will run into it when they're developing, it
won't be killing off processes or locking things up like a BUG(), and it
doesn't ruin any of the fragmentation strategy. It also fits with the
current behavior if someone asks the allocator do do something silly
like give them memory from a non-present zone.
-- Dave
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