ubiformat: libmtd: error 12 (Cannot allocate memory): on system with limited RAM

[Bastian.Ruppert at sewerin.de]

Hello,

i have problems writing an image with ubiformat in an environment with 
limited RAM.

The system is a TI OMAPL138 ARM9 with a 2.6.38-rc6-00071-gb9b65a4 kernel.

git log in mtd-utils:
commit a70811466de2c4c0c3a538e5e04a4dd1a8fbcc03
Author: Andy Shevchenko <ext-andriy.shevchenko at nokia.com>
Date:   Tue Apr 5 17:32:29 2011 +0300


The following command is working fine with say MEM=72M for the linux 
kernel, and 
the content in the ubi image can be mounted successfully after flashing.

./ubiformat /dev/mtd3 -f image.ubi -S 19660800

But with less memory, say 32M the following error occurs:

-bash-3.2# ./ubiformat /dev/mtd3 -f image.ubi -S 19660800
ubiformat: mtd3 (nand), size 79691776 bytes (76.0 MiB), 608 eraseblocks of 
131072 bytes (128.0 KiB), min. I/O size 2048 bytes
libscan: scanning eraseblock 607 -- 100 % complete 
ubiformat: 607 eraseblocks have valid erase counter, mean value is 3
ubiformat: 1 eraseblocks are supposedly empty
ubiformat: flashing eraseblock 35 -- 24 % complete  ubiformat: page 
allocation failure. order:5, mode:0x40d0
[<c0034838>] (unwind_backtrace+0x0/0xf0) from [<c007f730>] 
(__alloc_pages_nodemask+0x590/0x60c)
[<c007f730>] (__alloc_pages_nodemask+0x590/0x60c) from [<c007f7c0>] 
(__get_free_pages+0x14/0x44)
[<c007f7c0>] (__get_free_pages+0x14/0x44) from [<c01e2db4>] 
(mtd_write+0x8c/0x230)
[<c01e2db4>] (mtd_write+0x8c/0x230) from [<c00a38f8>] 
(vfs_write+0xb0/0x13c)
[<c00a38f8>] (vfs_write+0xb0/0x13c) from [<c00a3e8c>] 
(sys_write+0x3c/0x68)
[<c00a3e8c>] (sys_write+0x3c/0x68) from [<c002ffa0>] 
(ret_fast_syscall+0x0/0x2c)
Mem-info:
DMA per-cpu:
CPU    0: hi:    0, btch:   1 usd:   0
active_anon:345 inactive_anon:0 isolated_anon:0
 active_file:1600 inactive_file:3038 isolated_file:0
 unevictable:0 dirty:0 writeback:1 unstable:0
 free:702 slab_reclaimable:239 slab_unreclaimable:543
 mapped:379 shmem:0 pagetables:33 bounce:0
DMA free:2788kB min:720kB low:900kB high:1080kB active_anon:1380kB 
inactive_anon:0kB active_file:6400kB inactive_file:12152kB unevictable:0kB 
isolated(anon):0kB isolated(file):0kB present:32512kB mlocked:0kB 
dirty:0kB writeback:4kB mapped:1516kB shmem:0kB slab_reclaimable:956kB 
slab_unreclaimable:2192kB kernel_stack:320kB pagetables:132kB unstable:0kB 
bounce:0kB writeback_tmp:0kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no
lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 0
DMA: 266*4kB 19*8kB 20*16kB 11*32kB 8*64kB 3*128kB 0*256kB 0*512kB 
0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 2784kB
4638 total pagecache pages
8192 pages of RAM
763 free pages
1104 reserved pages
569 slab pages
1020 pages shared
0 pages swap cached
libmtd: error!: cannot write 131072 bytes to mtd3 (eraseblock 35, offset 
0)
        error 12 (Cannot allocate memory)
ubiformat: error!: cannot write eraseblock 35
           error 12 (Cannot allocate memory)
-bash-3.2# 

It seems that in ./ubi-utils/src/ubiformat.c:541 the function mtd_write 
returns
the error.
Is it possible to free some memory before writing the next page to get rid 
of 
the memory problem?

Best regards,

Bastian Ruppert.

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