The patch titled Subject: page_alloc: fix invalid watemark check on a negative value has been added to the -mm mm-hotfixes-unstable branch. Its filename is page_alloc-fix-invalid-watemark-check-on-a-negative-value.patch This patch will shortly appear at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/25-new.git/tree/patches/page_alloc-fix-invalid-watemark-check-on-a-negative-value.patch This patch will later appear in the mm-hotfixes-unstable branch at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm 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 via the mm-everything branch at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm and is updated there every 2-3 working days ------------------------------------------------------ From: Jaewon Kim <jaewon31.kim@xxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: page_alloc: fix invalid watemark check on a negative value Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2022 18:52:12 +0900 There was a report that a task is waiting at the throttle_direct_reclaim. The pgscan_direct_throttle in vmstat was increasing. This is a bug where zone_watermark_fast returns true even when the free is very low. The commit f27ce0e14088 ("page_alloc: consider highatomic reserve in watermark fast") changed the watermark fast to consider highatomic reserve. But it did not handle a negative value case which can be happened when reserved_highatomic pageblock is bigger than the actual free. If watermark is considered as ok for the negative value, allocating contexts for order-0 will consume all free pages without direct reclaim, and finally free page may become depleted except highatomic free. Then allocating contexts may fall into throttle_direct_reclaim. This symptom may easily happen in a system where wmark min is low and other reclaimers like kswapd does not make free pages quickly. Handle the negative case by using MIN. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220725095212.25388-1-jaewon31.kim@xxxxxxxxxxx Fixes: f27ce0e14088 ("page_alloc: consider highatomic reserve in watermark fast") Signed-off-by: Jaewon Kim <jaewon31.kim@xxxxxxxxxxx> Reported-by: GyeongHwan Hong <gh21.hong@xxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Baoquan He <bhe@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Yong-Taek Lee <ytk.lee@xxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- mm/page_alloc.c | 12 ++++++++---- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) --- a/mm/page_alloc.c~page_alloc-fix-invalid-watemark-check-on-a-negative-value +++ a/mm/page_alloc.c @@ -3968,11 +3968,15 @@ static inline bool zone_watermark_fast(s * need to be calculated. */ if (!order) { - long fast_free; + long usable_free; + long reserved; - fast_free = free_pages; - fast_free -= __zone_watermark_unusable_free(z, 0, alloc_flags); - if (fast_free > mark + z->lowmem_reserve[highest_zoneidx]) + usable_free = free_pages; + reserved = __zone_watermark_unusable_free(z, 0, alloc_flags); + + /* reserved may over estimate high-atomic reserves. */ + usable_free -= min(usable_free, reserved); + if (usable_free > mark + z->lowmem_reserve[highest_zoneidx]) return true; } _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from jaewon31.kim@xxxxxxxxxxx are page_alloc-fix-invalid-watemark-check-on-a-negative-value.patch