This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled mm/page_alloc: always attempt to allocate at least one page during bulk allocation to the 5.15-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: mm-page_alloc-always-attempt-to-allocate-at-least-one-page-during-bulk-allocation.patch and it can be found in the queue-5.15 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From c572e4888ad1be123c1516ec577ad30a700bbec4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 26 May 2022 10:12:10 +0100 Subject: mm/page_alloc: always attempt to allocate at least one page during bulk allocation From: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> commit c572e4888ad1be123c1516ec577ad30a700bbec4 upstream. Peter Pavlisko reported the following problem on kernel bugzilla 216007. When I try to extract an uncompressed tar archive (2.6 milion files, 760.3 GiB in size) on newly created (empty) XFS file system, after first low tens of gigabytes extracted the process hangs in iowait indefinitely. One CPU core is 100% occupied with iowait, the other CPU core is idle (on 2-core Intel Celeron G1610T). It was bisected to c9fa563072e1 ("xfs: use alloc_pages_bulk_array() for buffers") but XFS is only the messenger. The problem is that nothing is waking kswapd to reclaim some pages at a time the PCP lists cannot be refilled until some reclaim happens. The bulk allocator checks that there are some pages in the array and the original intent was that a bulk allocator did not necessarily need all the requested pages and it was best to return as quickly as possible. This was fine for the first user of the API but both NFS and XFS require the requested number of pages be available before making progress. Both could be adjusted to call the page allocator directly if a bulk allocation fails but it puts a burden on users of the API. Adjust the semantics to attempt at least one allocation via __alloc_pages() before returning so kswapd is woken if necessary. It was reported via bugzilla that the patch addressed the problem and that the tar extraction completed successfully. This may also address bug 215975 but has yet to be confirmed. BugLink: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216007 BugLink: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215975 Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220526091210.GC3441@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fixes: 387ba26fb1cb ("mm/page_alloc: add a bulk page allocator") Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: "Darrick J. Wong" <djwong@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Dave Chinner <dchinner@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> Cc: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [5.13+] Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- mm/page_alloc.c | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) --- a/mm/page_alloc.c +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c @@ -5299,8 +5299,8 @@ unsigned long __alloc_pages_bulk(gfp_t g page = __rmqueue_pcplist(zone, 0, ac.migratetype, alloc_flags, pcp, pcp_list); if (unlikely(!page)) { - /* Try and get at least one page */ - if (!nr_populated) + /* Try and allocate at least one page */ + if (!nr_account) goto failed_irq; break; } Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx are queue-5.15/mm-compaction-fast_find_migrateblock-should-return-pfn-in-the-target-zone.patch queue-5.15/mm-page_alloc-always-attempt-to-allocate-at-least-one-page-during-bulk-allocation.patch