On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 01:12:21AM +0000, Li, Liang Z wrote: > There still exist the case if the MAX_ORDER is configured to a large value, e.g. 36 for a system > with huge amount of memory, then there is only 28 bits left for the pfn, which is not enough. Not related to the balloon but how would it help to set MAX_ORDER to 36? What the MAX_ORDER affects is that you won't be able to ask the kernel page allocator for contiguous memory bigger than 1<<(MAX_ORDER-1), but that's a driver issue not relevant to the amount of RAM. Drivers won't suddenly start to ask the kernel allocator to allocate compound pages at orders >= 11 just because more RAM was added. The higher the MAX_ORDER the slower the kernel runs simply so the smaller the MAX_ORDER the better. > Should we limit the MAX_ORDER? I don't think so. We shouldn't strictly depend on MAX_ORDER value but it's mostly limited already even if configurable at build time. We definitely need it to reach at least the hugepage size, then it's mostly driver issue, but drivers requiring large contiguous allocations should rely on CMA only or vmalloc if they only require it virtually contiguous, and not rely on larger MAX_ORDER that would slowdown all kernel allocations/freeing. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>