The kernel is limited to about 1GB of virtual and physical memory. The kernel's memory is not pageable. The kernel usually wants physically contiguous memory. Often, the kernel must allocate the ...

If your production Linux system is logging memory allocation failures, it might still be able to keep running. But developers want to keep an eye on which code can survive a shortage of memory.

Hm. The init process for CMA goes through normal memory allocation from the kernel regions, rejecting things not in the right zone, until it gets what it needs. The "magic" bit for the CMA ...