#12694 NORM Future : page allocation failure, mwifiex

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#12694: page allocation failure, mwifiex
------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
           Reporter:  Quozl   |       Owner:                          
               Type:  defect  |      Status:  new                     
           Priority:  normal  |   Milestone:  Future Release          
          Component:  kernel  |     Version:  Software Build 13.2.0-13
         Resolution:          |    Keywords:                          
        Next_action:  design  |    Verified:  0                       
Deployment_affected:          |   Blockedby:                          
           Blocking:          |  
------------------------------+---------------------------------------------

Comment(by Quozl):

 In a similar situation was a
 [http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0906.2/00211.html
 recommendation to increase min_free_kbytes], which has a value of 3511 on
 my test system, and changing this affected the probability of failure;

  * 32768, no apparent change,
  * 65536, no apparent change,
  * 131072, possibly decreased frequency, but dev_alloc_skb still did fail
 eventually,
  * 262144, eliminated the failure entirely.

 Therefore a temporary workaround with a large impact (loss of useful
 memory) is:
 {{{
  echo 262144 > /proc/sys/vm/min_free_kbytes
 }}}

 Also [http://russ.garrett.co.uk/2009/01/01/linux-kernel-tuning/ Russ
 Garrett says] of min_free_kbytes that it is useful for ''swap-less
 machines, where you don’t want incoming network traffic to overwhelm the
 kernel and force an OOM before it has time to flush any buffers.''

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/12694#comment:7>
One Laptop Per Child <http://laptop.org/>
OLPC bug tracking system