[CentOS] swapper: page allocation failure. order:1, mode:0x20

[Tony Molloy]

On Thursday 18 October 2012 21:44:30 Tim Nelson wrote:
> I see this ocasionally on one of my CentOS 6.3 x64 systems:
> 
> Oct 18 03:10:52 backup kernel: swapper: page allocation failure.
>  order:1, mode:0x20 Oct 18 03:10:52 backup kernel: Pid: 0, comm:
>  swapper Not tainted 2.6.32-279.9.1.el6.x86_64 #1 Oct 18 03:10:52
>  backup kernel: Call Trace:
> Oct 18 03:10:52 backup kernel: <IRQ>  [<ffffffff8112789f>] ?
>  __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x77f/0x940 Oct 18 03:10:52 backup kernel:

<snip>

> 
> Any thoughts on the cause? The system has 16GB of RAM, and whenever
>  checked, there is no swap usage. Is this a memory error (bad RAM)?
> 
> --Tim

I have the same problem on a Dell PE R720 with 16GB of RAM doing lots 
of networking. It's a file server. It was discussed on the 
dell-poweredge mailing list last week 
<linux-poweredge at dell.com>

The conclusion was that it was harmless but for a discussion and 
possible workaround see 
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=770545#c16>

Hope this helps,

Tony