I noticed a theoretical case where an IOCB_NOWAIT read could sleep: filemap_get_pages filemap_get_read_batch page_cache_sync_readahead page_cache_sync_ra ondemand_readahead do_page_cache_ra page_cache_ra_unbounded gfp_t gfp_mask = readahead_gfp_mask(mapping); memalloc_nofs_save() __page_cache_alloc(gfp_mask); We're in a nofs context, so we're not going to start new IO, but we might wait for writeback to complete. We generally don't want to sleep for IO, particularly not for IO that isn't related to us. Jens, can you run this through your test rig and see if it makes any practical difference? Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) (2): mm/readahead: Add gfp_flags to ractl mm/filemap: Prevent waiting for memory for NOWAIT reads include/linux/pagemap.h | 3 +++ mm/filemap.c | 31 +++++++++++++++++++------------ mm/readahead.c | 16 ++++++++-------- 3 files changed, 30 insertions(+), 20 deletions(-) -- 2.30.2