This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled fs: buffer: move allocation failure loop into the allocator to the 3.10-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: fs-buffer-move-allocation-failure-loop-into-the-allocator.patch and it can be found in the queue-3.10 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From 84235de394d9775bfaa7fa9762a59d91fef0c1fc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 13:47:00 -0700 Subject: fs: buffer: move allocation failure loop into the allocator From: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> commit 84235de394d9775bfaa7fa9762a59d91fef0c1fc upstream. Buffer allocation has a very crude indefinite loop around waking the flusher threads and performing global NOFS direct reclaim because it can not handle allocation failures. The most immediate problem with this is that the allocation may fail due to a memory cgroup limit, where flushers + direct reclaim might not make any progress towards resolving the situation at all. Because unlike the global case, a memory cgroup may not have any cache at all, only anonymous pages but no swap. This situation will lead to a reclaim livelock with insane IO from waking the flushers and thrashing unrelated filesystem cache in a tight loop. Use __GFP_NOFAIL allocations for buffers for now. This makes sure that any looping happens in the page allocator, which knows how to orchestrate kswapd, direct reclaim, and the flushers sensibly. It also allows memory cgroups to detect allocations that can't handle failure and will allow them to ultimately bypass the limit if reclaim can not make progress. Reported-by: azurIt <azurit@xxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/buffer.c | 14 ++++++++++++-- mm/memcontrol.c | 2 ++ 2 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) --- a/fs/buffer.c +++ b/fs/buffer.c @@ -971,9 +971,19 @@ grow_dev_page(struct block_device *bdev, struct buffer_head *bh; sector_t end_block; int ret = 0; /* Will call free_more_memory() */ + gfp_t gfp_mask; - page = find_or_create_page(inode->i_mapping, index, - (mapping_gfp_mask(inode->i_mapping) & ~__GFP_FS)|__GFP_MOVABLE); + gfp_mask = mapping_gfp_mask(inode->i_mapping) & ~__GFP_FS; + gfp_mask |= __GFP_MOVABLE; + /* + * XXX: __getblk_slow() can not really deal with failure and + * will endlessly loop on improvised global reclaim. Prefer + * looping in the allocator rather than here, at least that + * code knows what it's doing. + */ + gfp_mask |= __GFP_NOFAIL; + + page = find_or_create_page(inode->i_mapping, index, gfp_mask); if (!page) return ret; --- a/mm/memcontrol.c +++ b/mm/memcontrol.c @@ -2771,6 +2771,8 @@ done: return 0; nomem: *ptr = NULL; + if (gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL) + return 0; return -ENOMEM; bypass: *ptr = root_mem_cgroup; Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx are queue-3.10/fs-buffer-move-allocation-failure-loop-into-the-allocator.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html