Re: iwl3945: order 5 allocation during ifconfig up; vm problem?

[Andrew Morton]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:11:13 +0200
Pavel Machek <pavel@xxxxxx> wrote:

> On Sun 2012-09-09 15:40:55, David Rientjes wrote:
> > On Sun, 9 Sep 2012, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > 
> > > On 3.6.0-rc2+, I tried to turn on the wireless, but got
> > > 
> > > root@amd:~# ifconfig wlan0 10.0.0.6 up
> > > SIOCSIFFLAGS: Cannot allocate memory
> > > SIOCSIFFLAGS: Cannot allocate memory
> > > root@amd:~# 
> > > 
> > > It looks like it uses "a bit too big" allocations to allocate
> > > firmware...? Order five allocation....
> > > 
> > > Hmm... then I did "echo 3  > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches" and now the
> > > network works. Is it VM problem that it failed to allocate memory when
> > > it was freeable?
> > > 
> > 
> > Do you have CONFIG_COMPACTION enabled?
> 
> Yes:
> 
> pavel@amd:/data/l/linux-good$ zgrep CONFIG_COMPACTION /proc/config.gz 
> CONFIG_COMPACTION=y

Asking for a 256k allocation is pretty crazy - this is an operating
system kernel, not a userspace application.

I'm wondering if this is due to a recent change, but I'm having trouble
working out where the allocation call site is.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/