On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 02:16:46PM -0700, David Rientjes wrote:
> On Fri, 13 May 2011, Mel Gorman wrote:
>
> > diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> > index 9f8a97b..057f1e2 100644
> > --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> > +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> > @@ -1972,6 +1972,7 @@ gfp_to_alloc_flags(gfp_t gfp_mask)
> > {
> > int alloc_flags = ALLOC_WMARK_MIN | ALLOC_CPUSET;
> > const gfp_t wait = gfp_mask & __GFP_WAIT;
> > + const gfp_t can_wake_kswapd = !(gfp_mask & __GFP_NO_KSWAPD);
> >
> > /* __GFP_HIGH is assumed to be the same as ALLOC_HIGH to save a branch. */
> > BUILD_BUG_ON(__GFP_HIGH != (__force gfp_t) ALLOC_HIGH);
> > @@ -1984,7 +1985,7 @@ gfp_to_alloc_flags(gfp_t gfp_mask)
> > */
> > alloc_flags |= (__force int) (gfp_mask & __GFP_HIGH);
> >
> > - if (!wait) {
> > + if (!wait && can_wake_kswapd) {
> > /*
> > * Not worth trying to allocate harder for
> > * __GFP_NOMEMALLOC even if it can't schedule.
> > diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
> > index 98c358d..c5797ab 100644
> > --- a/mm/slub.c
> > +++ b/mm/slub.c
> > @@ -1170,7 +1170,8 @@ static struct page *allocate_slab(struct kmem_cache *s, gfp_t flags, int node)
> > * Let the initial higher-order allocation fail under memory pressure
> > * so we fall-back to the minimum order allocation.
> > */
> > - alloc_gfp = (flags | __GFP_NOWARN | __GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_NO_KSWAPD) & ~__GFP_NOFAIL;
> > + alloc_gfp = (flags | __GFP_NOWARN | __GFP_NO_KSWAPD) &
> > + ~(__GFP_NOFAIL | __GFP_WAIT | __GFP_REPEAT);
> >
> > page = alloc_slab_page(alloc_gfp, node, oo);
> > if (unlikely(!page)) {
>
> It's unnecessary to clear __GFP_REPEAT, these !__GFP_NOFAIL allocations
> will immediately fail.
>
We can enter enter direct compaction or direct reclaim
at least once. If compaction is enabled and we enter
reclaim/compaction, the presense of __GFP_REPEAT makes a difference
in should_continue_reclaim(). With compaction disabled, the presense
of the flag is relevant in should_alloc_retry() with it being possible
to loop in the allocator instead of failing the SLUB allocation and
dropping back.
Maybe you meant !__GFP_WAIT instead of !__GFP_NOFAIL which makes
more sense. In that case, we clear both flags because
__GFP_REPEAT && !_GFP_WAIT is a senseless combination of flags.
If for whatever reason the __GFP_WAIT was re-added, the presense of
__GFP_REPEAT could cause problems in reclaim that would be hard to
spot again.
> alloc_gfp would probably benefit from having a comment about why
> __GFP_WAIT should be masked off here: that we don't want to do compaction
> or direct reclaim or retry the allocation more than once (so both
> __GFP_NORETRY and __GFP_REPEAT are no-ops).
That would have been helpful all right. I should have caught that
and explained it properly. In the event there is a new version of
the patch, I'll add one. For the moment, I'm dropping this patch
entirely. Christoph wants to maintain historic behaviour of SLUB to
maximise the number of high-order pages it uses and at the end of the
day, which option performs better depends entirely on the workload
and machine configuration.
--
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs
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