Re: [patch] ipv4: don't warn about skb ack allocation failures

From: David Rientjes
Date: Wed Jun 17 2009 - 16:33:54 EST


On Wed, 17 Jun 2009, Eric Dumazet wrote:

> > ipv4: don't warn about skb ack allocation failures
> >
> > tcp_send_ack() will recover from alloc_skb() allocation failures, so avoid
> > emitting warnings.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> > diff --git a/net/ipv4/tcp_output.c b/net/ipv4/tcp_output.c
> > --- a/net/ipv4/tcp_output.c
> > +++ b/net/ipv4/tcp_output.c
> > @@ -2442,7 +2442,7 @@ void tcp_send_ack(struct sock *sk)
> > * tcp_transmit_skb() will set the ownership to this
> > * sock.
> > */
> > - buff = alloc_skb(MAX_TCP_HEADER, GFP_ATOMIC);
> > + buff = alloc_skb(MAX_TCP_HEADER, GFP_ATOMIC | __GFP_NOWARN);
> > if (buff == NULL) {
> > inet_csk_schedule_ack(sk);
> > inet_csk(sk)->icsk_ack.ato = TCP_ATO_MIN;
>
> I count more than 800 GFP_ATOMIC allocations in net/ tree.
>
> Most (if not all) of them can recover in case of failures.
>
> Should we add __GFP_NOWARN to all of them ?
>

Yes, if they are recoverable without any side effects. Otherwise, they
will continue to emit page allocation failure messages which cause users
to waste their time when they recognize a problem of an unknown
seriousness level in both reporting the issue and looking for resulting
corruption. The __GFP_NOWARN annotation suppresses such warnings for
those very reasons.
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