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

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

Tim Nelson wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>> 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)?
>>
>> 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,

Thanks, but I agree with the person in the bugzilla thread, this is not
"just harmless" - when I see one in the logs, I usually see several within
a single hour. I *think* that it seems to happen more when someone's
copying or d/l large datasets, and it makes me extrememly worried about
the consistency of the data.

       mark