While running scylladb test suite, which uses io_uring + buffered writes + XFS, the system was spuriously returning ENOMEM, despite there being plenty of available memory to be reclaimed from the page cache. FWIW, I am running: 6.12.9-100.fc40.x86_64 Tracing showed io_uring_complete failing the request with ENOMEM: # cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace | grep "result -12" -B 100 | grep "0000000065b91cd1" reactor-1-707139 [000] ..... 46737.358518: io_uring_submit_req: ring 00000000e52339b8, req 0000000065b91cd1, user_data 0x50f0001e4000, opcode WRITE, flags 0x200000, sq_thread 0 reactor-1-707139 [000] ..... 46737.358526: io_uring_file_get: ring 00000000e52339b8, req 0000000065b91cd1, user_data 0x50f0001e4000, fd 45 reactor-1-707139 [000] ...1. 46737.358560: io_uring_complete: ring 00000000e52339b8, req 0000000065b91cd1, user_data 0x50f0001e4000, result -12, cflags 0x0 extra1 0 extra2 0 That puzzled me. Using retsnoop, it pointed to iomap_get_folio: 00:34:16.180612 -> 00:34:16.180651 TID/PID 253786/253721 (reactor-1/combined_tests): entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76 do_syscall_64+0x82 __do_sys_io_uring_enter+0x265 io_submit_sqes+0x209 io_issue_sqe+0x5b io_write+0xdd xfs_file_buffered_write+0x84 iomap_file_buffered_write+0x1a6 32us [-ENOMEM] iomap_write_begin+0x408 iter=&{.inode=0xffff8c67aa031138,.len=4096,.flags=33,.iomap={.addr=0xffffffffffffffff,.length=4096,.type=1,.flags=3,.bdev=0x… pos=0 len=4096 foliop=0xffffb32c296b7b80 ! 4us [-ENOMEM] iomap_get_folio iter=&{.inode=0xffff8c67aa031138,.len=4096,.flags=33,.iomap={.addr=0xffffffffffffffff,.length=4096,.type=1,.flags=3,.bdev=0x… pos=0 len=4096 Another trace shows iomap_file_buffered_write with ki_flags 2359304, which translate into (IOCB_WRITE & IOCB_ALLOC_CACHE & IOCB_NOWAIT) And flags 33 in iomap_get_folio means IOMAP_NOWAIT, which makes sense since XFS translates IOCB_NOWAIT into IOMAP_NOWAIT for performing the buffered write through iomap subsystem: fs/iomap/buffered-io.c- if (iocb->ki_flags & IOCB_NOWAIT) fs/iomap/buffered-io.c: iter.flags |= IOMAP_NOWAIT; We know io_uring works by first attempting to write with IOCB_NOWAIT, and if it fails with EAGAIN, it falls back to worker thread without the NOWAIT semantics. iomap_get_folio(), once called with IOMAP_NOWAIT, will request the allocation to follow GFP_NOWAIT behavior, so allocation can potentially fail under pressure. Coming across 'iomap: Add async buffered write support', I see Darrick wrote: "FGP_NOWAIT can cause __filemap_get_folio to return a NULL folio, which makes iomap_write_begin return -ENOMEM. If nothing has been written yet, won't that cause the ENOMEM to escape to userspace? Why do we want that instead of EAGAIN?" In the patch ''mm: return an ERR_PTR from __filemap_get_folio', I see the following changes: --- a/fs/iomap/buffered-io.c +++ b/fs/iomap/buffered-io.c @@ -468,19 +468,12 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(iomap_is_partially_uptodate); struct folio *iomap_get_folio(struct iomap_iter *iter, loff_t pos) { unsigned fgp = FGP_LOCK | FGP_WRITE | FGP_CREAT | FGP_STABLE | FGP_NOFS; - struct folio *folio; if (iter->flags & IOMAP_NOWAIT) fgp |= FGP_NOWAIT; - folio = __filemap_get_folio(iter->inode->i_mapping, pos >> PAGE_SHIFT, + return __filemap_get_folio(iter->inode->i_mapping, pos >> PAGE_SHIFT, fgp, mapping_gfp_mask(iter->inode->i_mapping)); - if (folio) - return folio; - - if (iter->flags & IOMAP_NOWAIT) - return ERR_PTR(-EAGAIN); - return ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM); } This leads to me believe we have a regression in this area, after that patch, since iomap_get_folio() is no longer returning EAGAIN with IOMAP_NOWAIT, if __filemap_get_folio() failed to get a folio. Now it returns ENOMEM unconditionally. Since we pushed the error picking decision to __filemap_get_folio, I think it makes sense for us to patch it such that it returns EAGAIN if allocation failed (under pressure) because IOMAP_NOWAIT was requested by its caller and allocation is not allowed to block waiting for reclaimer to do its thing. A possible way to fix it is this one-liner, but I am not well versed in this area, so someone may end up suggesting a better fix: diff --git a/mm/filemap.c b/mm/filemap.c index 804d7365680c..9e698a619545 100644 --- a/mm/filemap.c +++ b/mm/filemap.c @@ -1964,7 +1964,7 @@ struct folio *__filemap_get_folio(struct address_space *mapping, pgoff_t index, do { gfp_t alloc_gfp = gfp; - err = -ENOMEM; + err = (fgp_flags & FGP_NOWAIT) ? -ENOMEM : -EAGAIN; if (order > min_order) alloc_gfp |= __GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_NOWARN; folio = filemap_alloc_folio(alloc_gfp, order); Am I missing something? Regards, Raphael