From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751387AbeDHE1M (ORCPT ); Sun, 8 Apr 2018 00:27:12 -0400 Received: from bombadil.infradead.org ([198.137.202.133]:50992 "EHLO bombadil.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750760AbeDHE1L (ORCPT ); Sun, 8 Apr 2018 00:27:11 -0400 Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2018 21:27:09 -0700 From: Matthew Wilcox To: Michal Hocko Cc: LKML , linux-mm@kvack.org, Vlastimil Babka Subject: Re: __GFP_LOW Message-ID: <20180408042709.GC32632@bombadil.infradead.org> References: <20180405025841.GA9301@bombadil.infradead.org> <20180405142258.GA28128@bombadil.infradead.org> <20180405142749.GL6312@dhcp22.suse.cz> <20180405151359.GB28128@bombadil.infradead.org> <20180405153240.GO6312@dhcp22.suse.cz> <20180405161501.GD28128@bombadil.infradead.org> <20180405185444.GQ6312@dhcp22.suse.cz> <20180405201557.GA3666@bombadil.infradead.org> <20180406060953.GA8286@dhcp22.suse.cz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20180406060953.GA8286@dhcp22.suse.cz> User-Agent: Mutt/1.9.2 (2017-12-15) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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.