cmahostd, sosreport and cat beeing seen with page allocation failure error messages in RHEL 6.4

Issue

• Why are we getting the following error messages?

kernel: cmahostd: page allocation failure. order:4, mode:0xd0
kernel: Pid: 45243, comm: cmahostd Not tainted 2.6.32-358.el6.x86_64 #1
kernel: Call Trace:
kernel: [<ffffffff8112c127>] ? __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x757/0x8d0
kernel: [<ffffffff811669d2>] ? kmem_getpages+0x62/0x170
kernel: [<ffffffff811675ea>] ? fallback_alloc+0x1ba/0x270
kernel: [<ffffffff8116703f>] ? cache_grow+0x2cf/0x320
kernel: [<ffffffff81167369>] ? ____cache_alloc_node+0x99/0x160
kernel: [<ffffffff811a5028>] ? seq_read+0x148/0x400
kernel: [<ffffffff81168139>] ? __kmalloc+0x189/0x220
kernel: [<ffffffff811a5028>] ? seq_read+0x148/0x400
kernel: [<ffffffff811e966e>] ? proc_reg_read+0x7e/0xc0
kernel: [<ffffffff811816c5>] ? vfs_read+0xb5/0x1a0
kernel: [<ffffffff81181801>] ? sys_read+0x51/0x90
kernel: [<ffffffff810dc565>] ? __audit_syscall_exit+0x265/0x290
kernel: [<ffffffff8100b072>] ? system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b

• Why do I see the following?

kernel: Pid: 31413, comm: cat Not tainted 2.6.32-358.2.1.el6.x86_64 #1
kernel: Call Trace:
kernel: [<ffffffff8112c207>] ? __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x757/0x8d0
kernel: [<ffffffff81166ab2>] ? kmem_getpages+0x62/0x170
kernel: [<ffffffff811676ca>] ? fallback_alloc+0x1ba/0x270
kernel: [<ffffffff81167449>] ? ____cache_alloc_node+0x99/0x160
kernel: [<ffffffff811a5108>] ? seq_read+0x148/0x400
kernel: [<ffffffff81168219>] ? __kmalloc+0x189/0x220
kernel: [<ffffffff811a5108>] ? seq_read+0x148/0x400
kernel: [<ffffffff811e974e>] ? proc_reg_read+0x7e/0xc0
kernel: [<ffffffff811817a5>] ? vfs_read+0xb5/0x1a0
kernel: [<ffffffff811818e1>] ? sys_read+0x51/0x90
kernel: [<ffffffff8100b072>] ? system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b

• I see the following when executing sosreport on systems with high memory pressure:

Oct 29 10:55:35 hostname kernel: sosreport: page allocation failure. order:5, mode:0xd0

or

Oct 29 13:29:55 otherhost kernel: sosreport: page allocation failure. order:6, mode:0xd0