> > GFP_KERNEL has to be able to fail for 2.4. Otherwise you can get
> > everything jammed in kernel space waiting on GFP_KERNEL and if the
> > swapper cannot make space you die.
> 
> if one can get everything jammed waiting for GFP_KERNEL, and not being
> able to deallocate anything, thats a VM or resource-limit bug. This
> situation is just 1% RAM away from the 'root cannot log in', situation.

Unless Im missing something here think about this case

2 active processes, no swap

#1                                      #2
kmalloc 32K                             kmalloc 16K
OK                                      OK
kmalloc 16K                             kmalloc 32K
block                                   block

so GFP_KERNEL has to be able to fail - it can wait for I/O in some cases with
care, but when we have no pages left something has to give


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