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by loeg 25 days ago
> The membarrier syscall can fail to allocate, returning ENOMEM.

This is mentioned in the source comment, but not documented in the membarrier(2) manual page.

https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v7.1.2/source/kernel/sched/...

In reality... what is it allocating?

https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v7.1.2/source/kernel/sched/...

Ok, so it needs to allocate a cpumask (tiny) under some usages.

Similar requirement in other sites, e.g.: https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v7.1.2/source/kernel/sched/...

Depending on kernel config (e.g., !CONFIG_CPUMAKS_OFFSTACK), this allocation literally cannot fail:

https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v7.1.2/source/include/linux...

On OFFSTACK configs, it's merely a tiny heap allocation:

https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v7.1.2/source/lib/cpumask.c...

If this fails, your system is already hosed; program abort vs kernel lock up a few seconds later is probably immaterial. I think folly's choice to abort is a reasonable one.