The NUMA slab allocator (specifically, cache_alloc_refill)
is not refreshing its local copies of what cpu and what
numa node it is on, when it drops and reacquires the irq
block that it inherited from its caller. As a result
those values become invalid if an attempt to migrate the
process to another numa node occured while the irq block
had been dropped.
The solution is to make cache_alloc_refill reload these
variables whenever it drops and reacquires the irq block.
The error is very difficult to hit. When it does occur,
one gets the following oops + stack traceback bits in
check_spinlock_acquired:
kernel BUG at mm/slab.c:2417
cache_alloc_refill+0xe6
kmem_cache_alloc+0xd0
...
This patch was developed against 2.6.23, ported to and
compiled-tested only against 2.6.25-rc4.
Signed-off-by: Joe Korty <joe.korty@ccur.com> Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>