On Thu 19-02-15 06:01:24, Johannes Weiner wrote: [...] > Preferrably, we'd get rid of all nofail allocations and replace them > with preallocated reserves. But this is not going to happen anytime > soon, so what other option do we have than resolving this on the OOM > killer side? As I've mentioned in other email, we might give GFP_NOFAIL allocator access to memory reserves (by giving it __GFP_HIGH). This is still not a 100% solution because reserves could get depleted but this risk is there even with multiple oom victims. I would still argue that this would be a better approach because selecting more victims might hit pathological case more easily (other victims might be blocked on the very same lock e.g.). Something like the following: diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c index 8d52ab18fe0d..4b5cf28a13f4 100644 --- a/mm/page_alloc.c +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c @@ -2599,6 +2599,7 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, enum migrate_mode migration_mode = MIGRATE_ASYNC; bool deferred_compaction = false; int contended_compaction = COMPACT_CONTENDED_NONE; + int oom = 0; /* * In the slowpath, we sanity check order to avoid ever trying to @@ -2628,6 +2629,15 @@ retry: wake_all_kswapds(order, ac); /* + * __GFP_NOFAIL allocations cannot fail but yet the current context + * might be blocking resources needed by the OOM victim to terminate. + * Allow the caller to dive into memory reserves to succeed the + * allocation and break out from a potential deadlock. + */ + if (oom > 10 && (gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL)) + gfp_mask |= __GFP_HIGH; + + /* * OK, we're below the kswapd watermark and have kicked background * reclaim. Now things get more complex, so set up alloc_flags according * to how we want to proceed. @@ -2759,6 +2769,8 @@ retry: goto got_pg; if (!did_some_progress) goto nopage; + + oom++; } /* Wait for some write requests to complete then retry */ wait_iff_congested(ac->preferred_zone, BLK_RW_ASYNC, HZ/50); -- Michal Hocko SUSE Labs -- 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>