On Thu, 17 Jan 2008, Olaf Hering wrote:

The patch does not help.

Duh. We need to know more about the problem.

quoted

--- linux-2.6.orig/mm/slab.c	2008-01-03 12:26:42.000000000 -0800
+++ linux-2.6/mm/slab.c	2008-01-09 15:59:49.000000000 -0800

@@ -2977,7 +2977,10 @@ retry:
 	}
 	l3 = cachep->nodelists[node];
 
-	BUG_ON(ac->avail > 0 || !l3);
+	if (!l3)
+		return NULL;
+
+	BUG_ON(ac->avail > 0);
 	spin_lock(&l3->list_lock);
 
 	/* See if we can refill from the shared array */

Is this hsupposed to go into cache_grow()? There is no NULL check
for l3.

No its for cache_alloc_refill. cache_grow should only be called for
nodes that have memory. l3 is always used before cache_grow is called.

freeing bootmem node 1
Memory: 3496632k/3571712k available (6188k kernel code, 75080k reserved, 1324k data, 1220k bss, 304k init)
cache_grow(2781) swapper(0):c0,j4294937299 cp c0000000006a4fb8 !l3

Is there more backtrace information? What function called cache_grow?