alloc_page_buffers() - kernel panic?

[lk]

I was looking at the fs(buffer.c) code, An observation:

alloc_page_buffers() is called from the function create_empty_buffers() . If
the memory allocation for the buffer head (through kmem_cache_alloc) fails
the allocation is retried till successful for async I/O. However for
synchronous I/O no such handling is done and create_buffer will return
NULL which is not checked in the calling function. The pointer returned by
NULL
is used without checking for the NULL condition. This would result in a
kernel panic when alloc_page_buffers() is not able to allocate buffer heads
from the cache for sync I/O.


Is anyone aware of the thought process behind this difference in
implementation for sync and async I/O.

regards
lk


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