The patch titled Subject: mm, page_alloc: skip ->waternark_boost for atomic order-0 allocations has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is mm-page_alloc-skip-waternark_boost-for-atomic-order-0-allocations.patch This patch should soon appear at http://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmots/broken-out/mm-page_alloc-skip-waternark_boost-for-atomic-order-0-allocations.patch and later at http://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/mm-page_alloc-skip-waternark_boost-for-atomic-order-0-allocations.patch Before you just go and hit "reply", please: a) Consider who else should be cc'ed b) Prefer to cc a suitable mailing list as well c) Ideally: find the original patch on the mailing list and do a reply-to-all to that, adding suitable additional cc's *** Remember to use Documentation/process/submit-checklist.rst when testing your code *** The -mm tree is included into linux-next and is updated there every 3-4 working days ------------------------------------------------------ From: Charan Teja Reddy <charante@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: mm, page_alloc: skip ->waternark_boost for atomic order-0 allocations When boosting is enabled, it is observed that rate of atomic order-0 allocation failures are high due to the fact that free levels in the system are checked with ->watermark_boost offset. This is not a problem for sleepable allocations but for atomic allocations which looks like regression. This problem is seen frequently on system setup of Android kernel running on Snapdragon hardware with 4GB RAM size. When no extfrag event occurred in the system, ->watermark_boost factor is zero, thus the watermark configurations in the system are: _watermark = ( [WMARK_MIN] = 1272, --> ~5MB [WMARK_LOW] = 9067, --> ~36MB [WMARK_HIGH] = 9385), --> ~38MB watermark_boost = 0 After launching some memory hungry applications in Android which can cause extfrag events in the system to an extent that ->watermark_boost can be set to max i.e. default boost factor makes it to 150% of high watermark. _watermark = ( [WMARK_MIN] = 1272, --> ~5MB [WMARK_LOW] = 9067, --> ~36MB [WMARK_HIGH] = 9385), --> ~38MB watermark_boost = 14077, -->~57MB With default system configuration, for an atomic order-0 allocation to succeed, having free memory of ~2MB will suffice. But boosting makes the min_wmark to ~61MB thus for an atomic order-0 allocation to be successful system should have minimum of ~23MB of free memory(from calculations of zone_watermark_ok(), min = 3/4(min/2)). But failures are observed despite system is having ~20MB of free memory. In the testing, this is reproducible as early as first 300secs since boot and with furtherlowram configurations(<2GB) it is observed as early as first 150secs since boot. These failures can be avoided by excluding the ->watermark_boost in watermark caluculations for atomic order-0 allocations. [akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: fix comment grammar, reflow comment] Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1589882284-21010-1-git-send-email-charante@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Charan Teja Reddy <charante@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Vinayak Menon <vinmenon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- mm/page_alloc.c | 12 ++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+) --- a/mm/page_alloc.c~mm-page_alloc-skip-waternark_boost-for-atomic-order-0-allocations +++ a/mm/page_alloc.c @@ -3746,6 +3746,18 @@ retry: } mark = wmark_pages(zone, alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_MASK); + /* + * Allow GFP_ATOMIC order-0 allocations to exclude the + * zone->watermark_boost in their watermark calculations. + * We rely on the ALLOC_ flags set for GFP_ATOMIC requests in + * gfp_to_alloc_flags() for this. Reason not to use the + * GFP_ATOMIC directly is that we want to fall back to slow path + * thus wake up kswapd. + */ + if (unlikely(!order && !(alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_MASK) && + (alloc_flags & (ALLOC_HARDER | ALLOC_HIGH)))) { + mark = zone->_watermark[WMARK_MIN]; + } if (!zone_watermark_fast(zone, order, mark, ac->highest_zoneidx, alloc_flags)) { int ret; _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from charante@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx are mm-page_alloc-skip-waternark_boost-for-atomic-order-0-allocations.patch mm-page_alloc-skip-watermark_boost-for-atomic-order-0-allocations-fix.patch