[ILUG] mm: critical shortage of bounce buffers

[John Allman]

Kenn Humborg wrote:

>>Hi - I have a dual pentium III dell server, currently running redhat 7.1
>>and kernel 2.4.3 and it has a tendency to crap out with "mm: critical
>>shortage of bounce buffers". by crap out i mean hang.
>>    
>>
>
>That's a very old kernel.  First, easiest, thing to try is
>upgrading to the latest RedHat-supplied kernel RPM for 7.1.
>
>
>http://mirrors.esat.net/mirrors/ftp.redhat.com/redhat/linux/updates/7.1/en/o
>s/i686/
>
>
>  
>
>>"You can actually build yourself a custom none bounce
>>buffer 1.8GB kernel with about 2Gb of user virtual space per app." as
>>his advice for fixing this problem.
>>
>>Has anybody come accross this and am i right in thinking i can ignore
>>the above and that a new kernel will fix my problem?
>>    
>>
>
>If the latest official update doesn't help, then consider compiling
>your own.
>
>Later,
>Kenn
>
>[cue ridiculous vendor kernel vs linus kernel debate...]
>
>  
>
That was my plan:) just thought i'd check with the knowlegable folks to 
see if this was a known issue to avoid time wasting in case i needed 
something else to fix it.

finally traced this down which seems to imply an upgrade will fix it:

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001-43/0051.html

guess i wont know till i try...

thanks

John