2.4.0: __alloc_pages: 3-order allocation failed.

DISCUSSION John O'Donnell 3 participants 3 messages Jan 7, 2001 – Jan 8, 2001

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John O'Donnell

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2001-01-07 22:00 UTC #0 lore raw

What does this message mean in my dmesg output?

__alloc_pages: 3-order allocation failed. __alloc_pages: 3-order allocation failed. __alloc_pages: 3-order allocation failed. __alloc_pages: 3-order allocation failed. __alloc_pages: 3-order allocation failed. reset_xmit_timer sk=c5b3a680 1 when=0x2f49, caller=c022a202

I have been using my computer pretty heavily today.
At the same time:
KDE...
Gnapster: I share a 45Gb IDE drive (filled) - about 10 to 20 transfers happening simultaneously - average.
Burning CD-R's: dumping alot of Old Time Radio programs to CD-R
Browsin the web in Mozilla.
Misc terminals..
xwave: recording a 1968 Reel to Reel recording of Eugene Ormandy conducting The Philadelphia Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake to eventually burn to audio CD and create mp3's. :-) Once in a while xingmp3enc for Linux.

I recorded a 200Mb wav file and tried to edit it. Xwave gobbled up all my swap before bringing up a dialog box - out of memory... My cdburn failed, had to start over... I just closed xwave.... I did not reboot yet and am getting these messages.
My machine is still functioning ok - other than about 27Mb still swapped, so once in a while an app feels sluggish as I believe it is getting paged back in. I was just curious about the message.

About my home system:

866Mhz PIII (Overclocked to 923Mhz)
256Mb RAM - 133Mhz Bus (Overclocked at 142Mhz)
ISA Aztech FM Radio
PCI 3COM 3c905b 100Mbit Ethernet
PCI Trident 4D NX Wave sound card (4-Front drivers)
AGP 3DFX Voodoo 3000
PCI Adaptec 2940U2W SCSI Adapter (80Mb/Sec Bus)
PCI Adaptec 29160 SCSI Adapter (160Mb/Sec Bus)
9Gb Western Digital 80Mb/sec UW SCSI drives x 4
9Gb Seagate 40Mb/sec UW SCSI drives x 4
SCSI Pioneer DVD 303
SCSI Toshiba 32X CDROM
SCSI HP ScanJet 4c
IDE HP CD Writer+ 9100
SCSI HP C1533A 4mm 8Gb SCSI Tape Drive
IDE Superdisk floppy drive 120Mb
IDE Western Digital WD450AA 45Gb Drive (for the MP3's)
ttyS0: Multitech MT5600ZDXV 56K Voice/Data modem (for answering machine software I wrote)
ttyS1: Multitech MT2834ZDXb 33.6k Data modem for emergencies
USB Port: Rio500 MP3 Player (64Mb internal + 64Mb Flash Card)
lp0: OkiData OL400 Laser Printer

It runs Slackware Linux 7.0 with alot hacked up. It is connected to the Internet via a 384k SDSL connection.

mrlinux:~# cat /proc/meminfo
        total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  261292032 195178496 66113536        0  1331200 130674688
Swap: 131567616 26980352 104587264
MemTotal:       255168 kB
MemFree:         64564 kB
MemShared:           0 kB
Buffers:          1300 kB
Cached:         127612 kB
Active:          32476 kB
Inact_dirty:     85812 kB
Inact_clean:     10624 kB
Inact_target:       24 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:       255168 kB
LowFree:         64564 kB
SwapTotal:      128484 kB
SwapFree:       102136 kB

Signature · 16 lines

<SomeLamer> what's the difference between chattr and chmod?
<SomeGuru> SomeLamer: man chattr > 1; man chmod > 2; diff -u 1 2 | less
	-- Seen on #linux on irc
=== Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away.===
+==============================+====================================+
| John O'Donnell (Sr. Systems Engineer, Net Admin, Webmaster, etc.) |
| Voice FX Corporation (a subsidiary of Student Advantage)          |
| One Plymouth Meeting         |     E-Mail: [email protected]     |
| Suite 610                    |           www.voicefx.com          |
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Rik van Riel

2001-01-07 22:08 UTC #1 lore raw

Quoted 3 lines · John O'Donnell

What does this message mean in my dmesg output?
__alloc_pages: 3-order allocation failed.

It means something in the kernel is trying to allocate an area of 8 physically contiguous pages, but that wasn't available so the allocation failed...

This debugging check should probably be removed around 2.4.5, in the mean time it is much too useful to track down badly behaving device drivers ;)

regards,

Rik
--
Virtual memory is like a game you can't win; However, without VM there's truly nothing to lose...

		http://www.surriel.com/

http://www.conectiva.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com.br/

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Jens Axboe

2001-01-08 04:06 UTC #2 lore raw

In reply to John O'Donnell

Quoted 5 lines · Rik van Riel

Quoted 1 line
__alloc_pages: 3-order allocation failed.
This debugging check should probably be removed around 2.4.5, in the mean time it is much too useful to track down badly behaving device drivers ;)

It need not be a badly written driver, it could be a fine one just trying to see if it can get 2^3 successive pages for performance reasons. As long as it continues on its merry way when this fails it would be fine, and this message just confuses users.

Plus, for this to be really useful as a catch-bad-guys tool it would be nice with a hint as what causes it (EIP or even a call trace).

Signature · 6 lines

* Jens Axboe <[email protected]>
* SuSE Labs
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