Re: 2.6.16-rc5 OOM regression

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Thu Mar 02 2006 - 05:25:13 EST


Rene Herman <rene.herman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I was playing with "slabtop" (a /proc/slabinfo display tool) while
> running a little memory-eater app in a different xterm:
>
> === pig.c
>
> #include <stdlib.h>
>
> int main(void)
> {
> unsigned char *p;
>
> while ((p = malloc(4096)))
> *p = 0;
> return 0;
> }
>
> ===
>
> I was expecting the oom-killer but instead had X freeze on me entirely.
> No keyboard or mouse, and while the machine does still ping in this
> state, also no rlogins. This does not happen in 2.6.15.4 -- there the
> oom-killer will kill the eater app (sometimes including the xterm it's
> in, sometimes not, but not a problem).
>
> The 2.6.16-rc5 freeze is "highly repeatable", meaning not always, but
> very often. It seems that having for example Firefox loaded increases
> the chances of a full freeze, but that might just be chance as well.

crap, thanks. I would appear to have broken one of Christoph's patches for
him.

--- devel/mm/oom_kill.c~out_of_memory-locking-fix 2006-03-02 02:17:00.000000000 -0800
+++ devel-akpm/mm/oom_kill.c 2006-03-02 02:17:22.000000000 -0800
@@ -355,6 +355,7 @@ retry:
}

out:
+ read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
cpuset_unlock();
if (mm)
mmput(mm);
_

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