Re: iwl3945: order 5 allocation during ifconfig up; vm problem?
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date: 2012-09-11 23:25:41
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linux-mm, lkml
On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:11:13 +0200 Pavel Machek [off-list ref] wrote:
On Sun 2012-09-09 15:40:55, David Rientjes wrote:quoted
On Sun, 9 Sep 2012, Pavel Machek wrote:quoted
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.