Re: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed.

[Seth Mos <knuffie@xs4all.nl>]

On Fri, 10 Aug 2001, Nathan Poznick wrote:

> 
> Hello,
> 
> Yesterday, I installed the 1.0.1 patch against 2.4.5 on a machine at
> work.  The machine's a 2-cpu, 4gb ram machine (highmem 4gb enabled).
> I've got 4 disks on a dual-channel megaraid controller, doing hardware
> raid0 across all 4.  I created a single, 273gb partition, and did an
> mkfs.xfs on it.  I then tried to create a 20gb file with:
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/u01/bigassfile bs=4096 count=5242880
> 
> This gave me messages like:
> 
> Aug  9 14:59:10 dpdred2 kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed. 
> Aug  9 14:59:14 dpdred2 last message repeated 113 times
> Aug  9 15:01:51 dpdred2 last message repeated 90 times
> Aug  9 15:01:51 dpdred2 kernel: ed. 
> Aug  9 15:01:51 dpdred2 kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed. 
> Aug  9 15:02:32 dpdred2 last message repeated 364 times
> Aug  9 15:02:54 dpdred2 last message repeated 3 times
> Aug  9 15:02:54 dpdred2 last message repeated 11 times
> Aug  9 15:05:47 dpdred2 kernel: ed. 
> Aug  9 15:05:47 dpdred2 kernel: __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed.
> 
> The file was created successfully though...but the messages do tend to
> put me on edge a bit.  Copying a 64gb file from an NFS share to the
> filesystem doesn't show any problems.

Probably because it does not push the system as much.

>  I got the feeling from a
> message in the archives that this might be a problem with the mainline
> kernel's highmem code... would that be a reasonable assumption,

It is, other people are seeing it too.

> or is
> this an XFS issue?  If it's related to the highmem issues, then I'd
> need to upgrade to 2.4.7...are there release 1.0.1 patches against
> 2.4.7,

Not quite 1.0.1 patches but yes there are patches for 2.4.7 on the FTP
site.

> or will I have to upgrade to the latest development snapshot?

Not neccesarily. The cvs tree is at 2.4.8-pre7

> If I have to upgrade to the latest development snapshot, is it stable
> enough to use?

Using the 2.4.7 patch is probably safer.

Cheers
Seth