On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 12:00:56 +0000 Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 01:26:28PM +0100, Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote: [...] > > > I also suggest the API can return less pages than requested. Because I > > want to to "exit"/return if it need to go into an expensive code path > > (like buddy allocator or compaction). I'm assuming we have a flags to > > give us this behavior (via gfp_flags or alloc_flags)? > > > > The API returns the number of pages returned on a list so policies > around how aggressive it should be allocating the requested number of > pages could be adjusted without changing the API. Passing in policy > requests via gfp_flags may be problematic as most (all?) bits are > already used. Well, I was just thinking that I would use GFP_ATOMIC instead of GFP_KERNEL to "communicate" that I don't want this call to take too long (like sleeping). I'm not requesting any fancy policy :-) For page_pool use case we use (GFP_ATOMIC | __GFP_NOWARN) flags. static inline struct page *page_pool_dev_alloc_pages(struct page_pool *pool) { gfp_t gfp = (GFP_ATOMIC | __GFP_NOWARN); return page_pool_alloc_pages(pool, gfp); } -- Best regards, Jesper Dangaard Brouer MSc.CS, Principal Kernel Engineer at Red Hat LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brouer