From: Barry Song <v-songbaohua@xxxxxxxx> Non-blocking allocation with __GFP_NOFAIL is not supported and may still result in NULL pointers (if we don't return NULL, we result in busy-loop within non-sleepable contexts): static inline struct page * __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, struct alloc_context *ac) { ... /* * Make sure that __GFP_NOFAIL request doesn't leak out and make sure * we always retry */ if (gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL) { /* * All existing users of the __GFP_NOFAIL are blockable, so warn * of any new users that actually require GFP_NOWAIT */ if (WARN_ON_ONCE_GFP(!can_direct_reclaim, gfp_mask)) goto fail; ... } ... fail: warn_alloc(gfp_mask, ac->nodemask, "page allocation failure: order:%u", order); got_pg: return page; } Highlight this in the documentation of __GFP_NOFAIL so that non-mm subsystems can reject any illegal usage of __GFP_NOFAIL with GFP_ATOMIC, GFP_NOWAIT, etc. Signed-off-by: Barry Song <v-songbaohua@xxxxxxxx> --- include/linux/gfp_types.h | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) diff --git a/include/linux/gfp_types.h b/include/linux/gfp_types.h index 313be4ad79fd..0dad2c7914be 100644 --- a/include/linux/gfp_types.h +++ b/include/linux/gfp_types.h @@ -246,6 +246,8 @@ enum { * cannot handle allocation failures. The allocation could block * indefinitely but will never return with failure. Testing for * failure is pointless. + * It _must_ be blockable and used together with __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM. + * It should _never_ be used in non-sleepable contexts. * New users should be evaluated carefully (and the flag should be * used only when there is no reasonable failure policy) but it is * definitely preferable to use the flag rather than opencode endless -- 2.34.1