Running an rcuscale stress-suite can lead to "Out of memory" of a system. This can happen under high memory pressure with a small amount of physical memory. For example a KVM test configuration with 64 CPUs and 512 megabytes can lead to of memory after running rcuscale with below parameters: ../kvm.sh --torture rcuscale --allcpus --duration 10 --kconfig CONFIG_NR_CPUS=64 \ --bootargs "rcuscale.kfree_rcu_test=1 rcuscale.kfree_nthreads=16 rcuscale.holdoff=20 \ rcuscale.kfree_loops=10000 torture.disable_onoff_at_boot" --trust-make <snip> [ 12.054448] kworker/1:1H invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x2cc0(GFP_KERNEL|__GFP_NOWARN), order=0, oom_score_adj=0 [ 12.055303] CPU: 1 PID: 377 Comm: kworker/1:1H Not tainted 5.11.0-rc3+ #510 [ 12.055416] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.12.0-1 04/01/2014 [ 12.056485] Workqueue: events_highpri fill_page_cache_func [ 12.056485] Call Trace: [ 12.056485] dump_stack+0x57/0x6a [ 12.056485] dump_header+0x4c/0x30a [ 12.056485] ? del_timer_sync+0x20/0x30 [ 12.056485] out_of_memory.cold.47+0xa/0x7e [ 12.056485] __alloc_pages_slowpath.constprop.123+0x82f/0xc00 [ 12.056485] __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x289/0x2c0 [ 12.056485] __get_free_pages+0x8/0x30 [ 12.056485] fill_page_cache_func+0x39/0xb0 [ 12.056485] process_one_work+0x1ed/0x3b0 [ 12.056485] ? process_one_work+0x3b0/0x3b0 [ 12.060485] worker_thread+0x28/0x3c0 [ 12.060485] ? process_one_work+0x3b0/0x3b0 [ 12.060485] kthread+0x138/0x160 [ 12.060485] ? kthread_park+0x80/0x80 [ 12.060485] ret_from_fork+0x22/0x30 [ 12.062156] Mem-Info: [ 12.062350] active_anon:0 inactive_anon:0 isolated_anon:0 [ 12.062350] active_file:0 inactive_file:0 isolated_file:0 [ 12.062350] unevictable:0 dirty:0 writeback:0 [ 12.062350] slab_reclaimable:2797 slab_unreclaimable:80920 [ 12.062350] mapped:1 shmem:2 pagetables:8 bounce:0 [ 12.062350] free:10488 free_pcp:1227 free_cma:0 ... [ 12.101610] Out of memory and no killable processes... [ 12.102042] Kernel panic - not syncing: System is deadlocked on memory [ 12.102583] CPU: 1 PID: 377 Comm: kworker/1:1H Not tainted 5.11.0-rc3+ #510 [ 12.102600] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.12.0-1 04/01/2014 <snip> Having a fallback mechanism we should not go with "GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_NOWARN" that implies a "hard" page request involving OOM killer. Replace such set with the same as the one used for a single argument. Thus it will follow same rules: a) minimize a fallback hitting; b) avoid of OOM invoking; c) do a light-wait page request; d) avoid of dipping into the emergency reserves. With this change an rcuscale and the parameters which are in question never runs into "Kernel panic". Signed-off-by: Uladzislau Rezki (Sony) <urezki@xxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/rcu/tree.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/kernel/rcu/tree.c b/kernel/rcu/tree.c index 1e862120db9e..2c9cf4df942c 100644 --- a/kernel/rcu/tree.c +++ b/kernel/rcu/tree.c @@ -3435,7 +3435,7 @@ static void fill_page_cache_func(struct work_struct *work) for (i = 0; i < rcu_min_cached_objs; i++) { bnode = (struct kvfree_rcu_bulk_data *) - __get_free_page(GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_NOWARN); + __get_free_page(GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_NOMEMALLOC | __GFP_NOWARN); if (bnode) { raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&krcp->lock, flags); -- 2.20.1