From: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
To: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
linux-mm@kvack.org, Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Subject: Re: __GFP_LOW
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2018 21:27:09 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20180408042709.GC32632@bombadil.infradead.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20180406060953.GA8286@dhcp22.suse.cz>
On Fri, Apr 06, 2018 at 08:09:53AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> OK, we already split the documentation into these categories. So we got
> at least the structure right ;)
Yes, this part of the documentation makes sense to me :-)
> > - What kind of memory to allocate (DMA, NORMAL, HIGHMEM)
> > - Where to get the pages from
> > - Local node only (THISNODE)
> > - Only in compliance with cpuset policy (HARDWALL)
> > - Spread the pages between zones (WRITE)
> > - The movable zone (MOVABLE)
> > - The reclaimable zone (RECLAIMABLE)
> > - What you are willing to do if no free memory is available:
> > - Nothing at all (NOWAIT)
> > - Use my own time to free memory (DIRECT_RECLAIM)
> > - But only try once (NORETRY)
> > - Can call into filesystems (FS)
> > - Can start I/O (IO)
> > - Can sleep (!ATOMIC)
> > - Steal time from other processes to free memory (KSWAPD_RECLAIM)
>
> What does that mean? If I drop the flag, do not steal? Well I do because
> they will hit direct reclaim sooner...
If they allocate memory, sure. A process which stays in its working
set won't, unless it's preempted by kswapd.
> > - Kill other processes to get their memory (!RETRY_MAYFAIL)
>
> Not really for costly orders.
Yes, need to be more precise there.
> > - All of the above, and wait forever (NOFAIL)
> > - Take from emergency reserves (HIGH)
> > - ... but not the last parts of the regular reserves (LOW)
>
> What does that mean and how it is different from NOWAIT? Is this about
> the low watermark and if yes do we want to teach users about this and
> make the whole thing even more complicated? Does it wake
> kswapd? What is the eagerness ordering? LOW, NOWAIT, NORETRY,
> RETRY_MAYFAIL, NOFAIL?
LOW doesn't quite fit into the eagerness scale with the other flags;
instead it's composable with them. So you can specify NOWAIT | LOW,
NORETRY | LOW, NOFAIL | LOW, etc. All I have in mind is something
like this:
if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_HIGH)
min -= min / 2;
+ if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_LOW)
+ min += min / 2;
The idea is that a GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_LOW allocation cannot force a
GFP_KERNEL allocation into an OOM situation because it cannot take
the last pages of memory before the watermark. It can still make a
GFP_KERNEL allocation *more likely* to hit OOM (just like any other kind
of allocation can), but it can't do it by itself.
---
I've been wondering about combining the DIRECT_RECLAIM, NORETRY,
RETRY_MAYFAIL and NOFAIL flags together into a single field:
0 => RECLAIM_NEVER, /* !DIRECT_RECLAIM */
1 => RECLAIM_ONCE, /* NORETRY */
2 => RECLAIM_PROGRESS, /* RETRY_MAYFAIL */
3 => RECLAIM_FOREVER, /* NOFAIL */
The existance of __GFP_RECLAIM makes this a bit tricky. I honestly don't
know what this code is asking for:
kernel/power/swap.c: __get_free_page(__GFP_RECLAIM | __GFP_HIGH);
but I suspect I'll have to find out. There's about 60 places to look at.
I also want to add __GFP_KILL (to be part of the GFP_KERNEL definition).
That way, each bit that you set in the GFP mask increases the things the
page allocator can do to get memory for you. At the moment, RETRY_MAYFAIL
subtracts the ability to kill other tasks, which is unusual. For example,
this test in kvmalloc_node:
WARN_ON_ONCE((flags & GFP_KERNEL) != GFP_KERNEL);
doesn't catch RETRY_MAYFAIL being set.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-04-08 4:27 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 64+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-03-29 10:41 [PATCH v1] kernel/trace:check the val against the available mem Zhaoyang Huang
2018-03-29 16:05 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-03-30 3:32 ` Zhaoyang Huang
2018-03-30 14:07 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-03-30 6:53 ` [Kernel-patch-test] " kbuild test robot
2018-03-30 6:54 ` kbuild test robot
2018-03-30 14:20 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-03-30 16:37 ` Joel Fernandes
2018-03-30 19:10 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-03-30 20:37 ` Joel Fernandes
2018-03-30 20:53 ` Matthew Wilcox
2018-03-30 21:30 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-03-30 21:42 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-03-30 23:38 ` Joel Fernandes
2018-03-31 1:41 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-03-31 2:18 ` Matthew Wilcox
2018-03-31 3:07 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-03-31 5:44 ` Joel Fernandes
2018-04-02 0:52 ` Zhaoyang Huang
2018-04-03 11:06 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-03 11:51 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-03 12:16 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-03 12:23 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-03 12:35 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-03 13:32 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-03 13:56 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-03 14:17 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-03 16:11 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-03 16:59 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-03 22:56 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-04 6:20 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-04 12:21 ` Joel Fernandes
2018-04-04 12:59 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-04 14:10 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-04 14:25 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-04 14:42 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-04 15:04 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-04 15:27 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-04 15:38 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-04 2:58 ` Zhaoyang Huang
2018-04-04 6:23 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-04 9:29 ` Zhaoyang Huang
2018-04-04 14:11 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-04 14:23 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-04 14:31 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-04 14:47 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-04 15:47 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-05 2:58 ` Matthew Wilcox
2018-04-05 4:12 ` Joel Fernandes
2018-04-05 14:22 ` Matthew Wilcox
2018-04-05 14:27 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-05 14:34 ` Steven Rostedt
2018-04-05 15:13 ` Matthew Wilcox
2018-04-05 15:32 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-05 16:15 ` Matthew Wilcox
2018-04-05 18:54 ` Michal Hocko
2018-04-05 20:15 ` __GFP_LOW Matthew Wilcox
2018-04-06 6:09 ` __GFP_LOW Michal Hocko
2018-04-08 4:27 ` Matthew Wilcox [this message]
2018-04-09 7:34 ` __GFP_LOW Michal Hocko
2018-04-09 15:51 ` __GFP_LOW Matthew Wilcox
2018-04-09 18:14 ` __GFP_LOW Michal Hocko
[not found] ` <CA+JonM0HG9kWb6-0iyDQ8UMxTeR-f=+ZL89t5DvvDULDC8Sfyw@mail.gmail.com>
2018-04-10 12:19 ` __GFP_LOW Matthew Wilcox
2018-04-05 14:30 ` [PATCH v1] kernel/trace:check the val against the available mem Steven Rostedt
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