Re: Bug in recent large_alloc changes to the ZFS zio code?

http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/192360


On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:20 PM, Richard Todd
<rmtodd_at_ichotolot.servalan.com> wrote:
> Okay, I'm looking at the recent changes in the ZFS zio code to change how
> data buffers are allocated (svn r192207).  The old code for
> zio_data_buf_alloc just called kmem_alloc (the Solaris compatibility
> one), which in turn called malloc() with M_WAITOK, so it would always
> be guaranteed of getting a valid, non-null pointer.  Fair enough.
> The new code has an alternate code path, where in "arc_large_memory_enabled"
> mode, it calls the new function zio_large_malloc instead.  zio_large_malloc
> in turn tries a few times to allocate the required pages using
> vm_phys_alloc_contig, but if that fails goes ahead and returns NULL.
>
> Here's the problem.  As near as I can tell, none of the code that calls
> zio_data_buf_alloc appears to check for the possibility that the
> returned pointer could be NULL, which I guess is reasonable as the original
> code never could return NULL.  However, the new large malloc code *can* return
> NULL, which causes the obvious problem.  The other day I mentioned here a
> panic I saw where under sufficiently heavy load the GEOM code was
> complaining that it had been given a NULL data pointer.  It seems to me that
> that was likely because zio had tried to allocate a data buffer and gotten
> a NULL pointer instead.
>
>
>
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