<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>linux/mm/page_alloc.c, branch v4.4</title>
<subtitle>Mirror of https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/
</subtitle>
<id>https://git.shady.money/linux/atom?h=v4.4</id>
<link rel='self' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/atom?h=v4.4'/>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/'/>
<updated>2015-12-12T18:15:34Z</updated>
<entry>
<title>mm: fix swapped Movable and Reclaimable in /proc/pagetypeinfo</title>
<updated>2015-12-12T18:15:34Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Vlastimil Babka</name>
<email>vbabka@suse.cz</email>
</author>
<published>2015-12-11T21:40:29Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=475a2f905d5a41d5fc569ef21841be67d0a7f788'/>
<id>urn:sha1:475a2f905d5a41d5fc569ef21841be67d0a7f788</id>
<content type='text'>
Commit 016c13daa5c9 ("mm, page_alloc: use masks and shifts when
converting GFP flags to migrate types") has swapped MIGRATE_MOVABLE and
MIGRATE_RECLAIMABLE in the enum definition.  However, migratetype_names
wasn't updated to reflect that.

As a result, the file /proc/pagetypeinfo shows the counts for Movable as
Reclaimable and vice versa.

Additionally, commit 0aaa29a56e4f ("mm, page_alloc: reserve pageblocks
for high-order atomic allocations on demand") introduced
MIGRATE_HIGHATOMIC, but did not add a letter to distinguish it into
show_migration_types(), so it doesn't appear in the listing of free
areas during page alloc failures or oom kills.

This patch fixes both problems.  The atomic reserves will show with a
letter 'H' in the free areas listings.

Fixes: 016c13daa5c9 ("mm, page_alloc: use masks and shifts when converting GFP flags to migrate types")
Fixes: 0aaa29a56e4f ("mm, page_alloc: reserve pageblocks for high-order atomic allocations on demand")
Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Acked-by: Mel Gorman &lt;mgorman@suse.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Fix alloc_node_mem_map() to work on ia64 again</title>
<updated>2015-11-10T22:44:26Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Tony Luck</name>
<email>tony.luck@intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2015-11-10T18:09:47Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=b0aeba741b2d082e4f0773881af4906ce2bb8231'/>
<id>urn:sha1:b0aeba741b2d082e4f0773881af4906ce2bb8231</id>
<content type='text'>
In commit a1c34a3bf00a ("mm: Don't offset memmap for flatmem") Laura
fixed a problem for Srinivas relating to the bottom 2MB of RAM on an ARM
IFC6410 board.

One small wrinkle on ia64 is that it allocates the node_mem_map earlier
in arch code, so it skips the block of code where "offset" is
initialized.

Move initialization of start and offset before the check for the
node_mem_map so that they will always be available in the latter part of
the function.

Tested-by: Laura Abbott &lt;laura@labbott.name&gt;
Fixes: a1c34a3bf00a (mm: Don't offset memmap for flatmem)
Signed-off-by: Tony Luck &lt;tony.luck@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: use 'unsigned int' for page order</title>
<updated>2015-11-07T01:50:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Kirill A. Shutemov</name>
<email>kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2015-11-07T00:29:57Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=d00181b96eb86c914cb327d1de974a1b71366e1b'/>
<id>urn:sha1:d00181b96eb86c914cb327d1de974a1b71366e1b</id>
<content type='text'>
Let's try to be consistent about data type of page order.

[sfr@canb.auug.org.au: fix build (type of pageblock_order)]
[hughd@google.com: some configs end up with MAX_ORDER and pageblock_order having different types]
Signed-off-by: Kirill A. Shutemov &lt;kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com&gt;
Acked-by: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.com&gt;
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Reviewed-by: Andrea Arcangeli &lt;aarcange@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Andi Kleen &lt;ak@linux.intel.com&gt;
Cc: Aneesh Kumar K.V &lt;aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Christoph Lameter &lt;cl@linux.com&gt;
Cc: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: Joonsoo Kim &lt;iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com&gt;
Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky &lt;sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Stephen Rothwell &lt;sfr@canb.auug.org.au&gt;
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins &lt;hughd@google.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: make compound_head() robust</title>
<updated>2015-11-07T01:50:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Kirill A. Shutemov</name>
<email>kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2015-11-07T00:29:54Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=1d798ca3f16437c71ff63e36597ff07f9c12e4d6'/>
<id>urn:sha1:1d798ca3f16437c71ff63e36597ff07f9c12e4d6</id>
<content type='text'>
Hugh has pointed that compound_head() call can be unsafe in some
context. There's one example:

	CPU0					CPU1

isolate_migratepages_block()
  page_count()
    compound_head()
      !!PageTail() == true
					put_page()
					  tail-&gt;first_page = NULL
      head = tail-&gt;first_page
					alloc_pages(__GFP_COMP)
					   prep_compound_page()
					     tail-&gt;first_page = head
					     __SetPageTail(p);
      !!PageTail() == true
    &lt;head == NULL dereferencing&gt;

The race is pure theoretical. I don't it's possible to trigger it in
practice. But who knows.

We can fix the race by changing how encode PageTail() and compound_head()
within struct page to be able to update them in one shot.

The patch introduces page-&gt;compound_head into third double word block in
front of compound_dtor and compound_order. Bit 0 encodes PageTail() and
the rest bits are pointer to head page if bit zero is set.

The patch moves page-&gt;pmd_huge_pte out of word, just in case if an
architecture defines pgtable_t into something what can have the bit 0
set.

hugetlb_cgroup uses page-&gt;lru.next in the second tail page to store
pointer struct hugetlb_cgroup. The patch switch it to use page-&gt;private
in the second tail page instead. The space is free since -&gt;first_page is
removed from the union.

The patch also opens possibility to remove HUGETLB_CGROUP_MIN_ORDER
limitation, since there's now space in first tail page to store struct
hugetlb_cgroup pointer. But that's out of scope of the patch.

That means page-&gt;compound_head shares storage space with:

 - page-&gt;lru.next;
 - page-&gt;next;
 - page-&gt;rcu_head.next;

That's too long list to be absolutely sure, but looks like nobody uses
bit 0 of the word.

page-&gt;rcu_head.next guaranteed[1] to have bit 0 clean as long as we use
call_rcu(), call_rcu_bh(), call_rcu_sched(), or call_srcu(). But future
call_rcu_lazy() is not allowed as it makes use of the bit and we can
get false positive PageTail().

[1] http://lkml.kernel.org/g/20150827163634.GD4029@linux.vnet.ibm.com

Signed-off-by: Kirill A. Shutemov &lt;kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com&gt;
Acked-by: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.com&gt;
Reviewed-by: Andrea Arcangeli &lt;aarcange@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: Hugh Dickins &lt;hughd@google.com&gt;
Cc: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Acked-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Aneesh Kumar K.V &lt;aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Andi Kleen &lt;ak@linux.intel.com&gt;
Cc: Christoph Lameter &lt;cl@linux.com&gt;
Cc: Joonsoo Kim &lt;iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com&gt;
Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky &lt;sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: pack compound_dtor and compound_order into one word in struct page</title>
<updated>2015-11-07T01:50:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Kirill A. Shutemov</name>
<email>kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2015-11-07T00:29:50Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=f1e61557f0230d51a3df8d825f2c156e75563bff'/>
<id>urn:sha1:f1e61557f0230d51a3df8d825f2c156e75563bff</id>
<content type='text'>
The patch halves space occupied by compound_dtor and compound_order in
struct page.

For compound_order, it's trivial long -&gt; short conversion.

For get_compound_page_dtor(), we now use hardcoded table for destructor
lookup and store its index in the struct page instead of direct pointer
to destructor. It shouldn't be a big trouble to maintain the table: we
have only two destructor and NULL currently.

This patch free up one word in tail pages for reuse. This is preparation
for the next patch.

Signed-off-by: Kirill A. Shutemov &lt;kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com&gt;
Reviewed-by: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.com&gt;
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Reviewed-by: Andrea Arcangeli &lt;aarcange@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Andi Kleen &lt;ak@linux.intel.com&gt;
Cc: Aneesh Kumar K.V &lt;aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Christoph Lameter &lt;cl@linux.com&gt;
Cc: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: Hugh Dickins &lt;hughd@google.com&gt;
Cc: Joonsoo Kim &lt;iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com&gt;
Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky &lt;sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm, page_alloc: only enforce watermarks for order-0 allocations</title>
<updated>2015-11-07T01:50:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Mel Gorman</name>
<email>mgorman@techsingularity.net</email>
</author>
<published>2015-11-07T00:28:40Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=97a16fc82a7c5b0cfce95c05dfb9561e306ca1b1'/>
<id>urn:sha1:97a16fc82a7c5b0cfce95c05dfb9561e306ca1b1</id>
<content type='text'>
The primary purpose of watermarks is to ensure that reclaim can always
make forward progress in PF_MEMALLOC context (kswapd and direct reclaim).
These assume that order-0 allocations are all that is necessary for
forward progress.

High-order watermarks serve a different purpose.  Kswapd had no high-order
awareness before they were introduced
(https://lkml.kernel.org/r/413AA7B2.4000907@yahoo.com.au).  This was
particularly important when there were high-order atomic requests.  The
watermarks both gave kswapd awareness and made a reserve for those atomic
requests.

There are two important side-effects of this.  The most important is that
a non-atomic high-order request can fail even though free pages are
available and the order-0 watermarks are ok.  The second is that
high-order watermark checks are expensive as the free list counts up to
the requested order must be examined.

With the introduction of MIGRATE_HIGHATOMIC it is no longer necessary to
have high-order watermarks.  Kswapd and compaction still need high-order
awareness which is handled by checking that at least one suitable
high-order page is free.

With the patch applied, there was little difference in the allocation
failure rates as the atomic reserves are small relative to the number of
allocation attempts.  The expected impact is that there will never be an
allocation failure report that shows suitable pages on the free lists.

The one potential side-effect of this is that in a vanilla kernel, the
watermark checks may have kept a free page for an atomic allocation.  Now,
we are 100% relying on the HighAtomic reserves and an early allocation to
have allocated them.  If the first high-order atomic allocation is after
the system is already heavily fragmented then it'll fail.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: simplify __zone_watermark_ok(), per Vlastimil]
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman &lt;mgorman@techsingularity.net&gt;
Acked-by: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.com&gt;
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner &lt;hannes@cmpxchg.org&gt;
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Cc: Christoph Lameter &lt;cl@linux.com&gt;
Cc: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: Vitaly Wool &lt;vitalywool@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Rik van Riel &lt;riel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm, page_alloc: reserve pageblocks for high-order atomic allocations on demand</title>
<updated>2015-11-07T01:50:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Mel Gorman</name>
<email>mgorman@techsingularity.net</email>
</author>
<published>2015-11-07T00:28:37Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=0aaa29a56e4fb0fc9e24edb649e2733a672ca099'/>
<id>urn:sha1:0aaa29a56e4fb0fc9e24edb649e2733a672ca099</id>
<content type='text'>
High-order watermark checking exists for two reasons -- kswapd high-order
awareness and protection for high-order atomic requests.  Historically the
kernel depended on MIGRATE_RESERVE to preserve min_free_kbytes as
high-order free pages for as long as possible.  This patch introduces
MIGRATE_HIGHATOMIC that reserves pageblocks for high-order atomic
allocations on demand and avoids using those blocks for order-0
allocations.  This is more flexible and reliable than MIGRATE_RESERVE was.

A MIGRATE_HIGHORDER pageblock is created when an atomic high-order
allocation request steals a pageblock but limits the total number to 1% of
the zone.  Callers that speculatively abuse atomic allocations for
long-lived high-order allocations to access the reserve will quickly fail.
 Note that SLUB is currently not such an abuser as it reclaims at least
once.  It is possible that the pageblock stolen has few suitable
high-order pages and will need to steal again in the near future but there
would need to be strong justification to search all pageblocks for an
ideal candidate.

The pageblocks are unreserved if an allocation fails after a direct
reclaim attempt.

The watermark checks account for the reserved pageblocks when the
allocation request is not a high-order atomic allocation.

The reserved pageblocks can not be used for order-0 allocations.  This may
allow temporary wastage until a failed reclaim reassigns the pageblock.
This is deliberate as the intent of the reservation is to satisfy a
limited number of atomic high-order short-lived requests if the system
requires them.

The stutter benchmark was used to evaluate this but while it was running
there was a systemtap script that randomly allocated between 1 high-order
page and 12.5% of memory's worth of order-3 pages using GFP_ATOMIC.  This
is much larger than the potential reserve and it does not attempt to be
realistic.  It is intended to stress random high-order allocations from an
unknown source, show that there is a reduction in failures without
introducing an anomaly where atomic allocations are more reliable than
regular allocations.  The amount of memory reserved varied throughout the
workload as reserves were created and reclaimed under memory pressure.
The allocation failures once the workload warmed up were as follows;

4.2-rc5-vanilla		70%
4.2-rc5-atomic-reserve	56%

The failure rate was also measured while building multiple kernels.  The
failure rate was 14% but is 6% with this patch applied.

Overall, this is a small reduction but the reserves are small relative to
the number of allocation requests.  In early versions of the patch, the
failure rate reduced by a much larger amount but that required much larger
reserves and perversely made atomic allocations seem more reliable than
regular allocations.

[yalin.wang2010@gmail.com: fix redundant check and a memory leak]
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman &lt;mgorman@techsingularity.net&gt;
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Acked-by: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.com&gt;
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner &lt;hannes@cmpxchg.org&gt;
Cc: Christoph Lameter &lt;cl@linux.com&gt;
Cc: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: Vitaly Wool &lt;vitalywool@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Rik van Riel &lt;riel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: yalin wang &lt;yalin.wang2010@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm, page_alloc: remove MIGRATE_RESERVE</title>
<updated>2015-11-07T01:50:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Mel Gorman</name>
<email>mgorman@techsingularity.net</email>
</author>
<published>2015-11-07T00:28:34Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=974a786e63c96a2401a78ddba926f34c128474f1'/>
<id>urn:sha1:974a786e63c96a2401a78ddba926f34c128474f1</id>
<content type='text'>
MIGRATE_RESERVE preserves an old property of the buddy allocator that
existed prior to fragmentation avoidance -- min_free_kbytes worth of pages
tended to remain contiguous until the only alternative was to fail the
allocation.  At the time it was discovered that high-order atomic
allocations relied on this property so MIGRATE_RESERVE was introduced.  A
later patch will introduce an alternative MIGRATE_HIGHATOMIC so this patch
deletes MIGRATE_RESERVE and supporting code so it'll be easier to review.
Note that this patch in isolation may look like a false regression if
someone was bisecting high-order atomic allocation failures.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman &lt;mgorman@techsingularity.net&gt;
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Cc: Christoph Lameter &lt;cl@linux.com&gt;
Cc: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: Johannes Weiner &lt;hannes@cmpxchg.org&gt;
Cc: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.com&gt;
Cc: Vitaly Wool &lt;vitalywool@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Rik van Riel &lt;riel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm, page_alloc: delete the zonelist_cache</title>
<updated>2015-11-07T01:50:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Mel Gorman</name>
<email>mgorman@techsingularity.net</email>
</author>
<published>2015-11-07T00:28:31Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=f77cf4e4cc9d40310a7224a1a67c733aeec78836'/>
<id>urn:sha1:f77cf4e4cc9d40310a7224a1a67c733aeec78836</id>
<content type='text'>
The zonelist cache (zlc) was introduced to skip over zones that were
recently known to be full.  This avoided expensive operations such as the
cpuset checks, watermark calculations and zone_reclaim.  The situation
today is different and the complexity of zlc is harder to justify.

1) The cpuset checks are no-ops unless a cpuset is active and in general
   are a lot cheaper.

2) zone_reclaim is now disabled by default and I suspect that was a large
   source of the cost that zlc wanted to avoid. When it is enabled, it's
   known to be a major source of stalling when nodes fill up and it's
   unwise to hit every other user with the overhead.

3) Watermark checks are expensive to calculate for high-order
   allocation requests. Later patches in this series will reduce the cost
   of the watermark checking.

4) The most important issue is that in the current implementation it
   is possible for a failed THP allocation to mark a zone full for order-0
   allocations and cause a fallback to remote nodes.

The last issue could be addressed with additional complexity but as the
benefit of zlc is questionable, it is better to remove it.  If stalls due
to zone_reclaim are ever reported then an alternative would be to
introduce deferring logic based on a timeout inside zone_reclaim itself
and leave the page allocator fast paths alone.

The impact on page-allocator microbenchmarks is negligible as they don't
hit the paths where the zlc comes into play.  Most page-reclaim related
workloads showed no noticeable difference as a result of the removal.

The impact was noticeable in a workload called "stutter".  One part uses a
lot of anonymous memory, a second measures mmap latency and a third copies
a large file.  In an ideal world the latency application would not notice
the mmap latency.  On a 2-node machine the results of this patch are

stutter
                             4.3.0-rc1             4.3.0-rc1
                              baseline              nozlc-v4
Min         mmap     20.9243 (  0.00%)     20.7716 (  0.73%)
1st-qrtle   mmap     22.0612 (  0.00%)     22.0680 ( -0.03%)
2nd-qrtle   mmap     22.3291 (  0.00%)     22.3809 ( -0.23%)
3rd-qrtle   mmap     25.2244 (  0.00%)     25.2396 ( -0.06%)
Max-90%     mmap     48.0995 (  0.00%)     28.3713 ( 41.02%)
Max-93%     mmap     52.5557 (  0.00%)     36.0170 ( 31.47%)
Max-95%     mmap     55.8173 (  0.00%)     47.3163 ( 15.23%)
Max-99%     mmap     67.3781 (  0.00%)     70.1140 ( -4.06%)
Max         mmap  24447.6375 (  0.00%)  12915.1356 ( 47.17%)
Mean        mmap     33.7883 (  0.00%)     27.7944 ( 17.74%)
Best99%Mean mmap     27.7825 (  0.00%)     25.2767 (  9.02%)
Best95%Mean mmap     26.3912 (  0.00%)     23.7994 (  9.82%)
Best90%Mean mmap     24.9886 (  0.00%)     23.2251 (  7.06%)
Best50%Mean mmap     22.0157 (  0.00%)     22.0261 ( -0.05%)
Best10%Mean mmap     21.6705 (  0.00%)     21.6083 (  0.29%)
Best5%Mean  mmap     21.5581 (  0.00%)     21.4611 (  0.45%)
Best1%Mean  mmap     21.3079 (  0.00%)     21.1631 (  0.68%)

Note that the maximum stall latency went from 24 seconds to 12 which is
still bad but an improvement.  The milage varies considerably 2-node
machine on an earlier test went from 494 seconds to 47 seconds and a
4-node machine that tested an earlier version of this patch went from a
worst case stall time of 6 seconds to 67ms.  The nature of the benchmark
is inherently unpredictable as it is hammering the system and the milage
will vary between machines.

There is a secondary impact with potentially more direct reclaim because
zones are now being considered instead of being skipped by zlc.  In this
particular test run it did not occur so will not be described.  However,
in at least one test the following was observed

1. Direct reclaim rates were higher. This was likely due to direct reclaim
  being entered instead of the zlc disabling a zone and busy looping.
  Busy looping may have the effect of allowing kswapd to make more
  progress and in some cases may be better overall. If this is found then
  the correct action is to put direct reclaimers to sleep on a waitqueue
  and allow kswapd make forward progress. Busy looping on the zlc is even
  worse than when the allocator used to blindly call congestion_wait().

2. There was higher swap activity as direct reclaim was active.

3. Direct reclaim efficiency was lower. This is related to 1 as more
  scanning activity also encountered more pages that could not be
  immediately reclaimed

In that case, the direct page scan and reclaim rates are noticeable but
it is not considered a problem for a few reasons

1. The test is primarily concerned with latency. The mmap attempts are also
   faulted which means there are THP allocation requests. The ZLC could
   cause zones to be disabled causing the process to busy loop instead
   of reclaiming.  This looks like elevated direct reclaim activity but
   it's the correct action to take based on what processes requested.

2. The test hammers reclaim and compaction heavily. The number of successful
   THP faults is highly variable but affects the reclaim stats. It's not a
   realistic or reasonable measure of page reclaim activity.

3. No other page-reclaim intensive workload that was tested showed a problem.

4. If a workload is identified that benefitted from the busy looping then it
   should be fixed by having direct reclaimers sleep on a wait queue until
   woken by kswapd instead of busy looping. We had this class of problem before
   when congestion_waits() with a fixed timeout was a brain damaged decision
   but happened to benefit some workloads.

If a workload is identified that relied on the zlc to busy loop then it
should be fixed correctly and have a direct reclaimer sleep on a waitqueue
until woken by kswapd.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman &lt;mgorman@techsingularity.net&gt;
Acked-by: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Acked-by: Christoph Lameter &lt;cl@linux.com&gt;
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Acked-by: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.com&gt;
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner &lt;hannes@cmpxchg.org&gt;
Cc: Vitaly Wool &lt;vitalywool@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Rik van Riel &lt;riel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm, page_alloc: rename __GFP_WAIT to __GFP_RECLAIM</title>
<updated>2015-11-07T01:50:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Mel Gorman</name>
<email>mgorman@techsingularity.net</email>
</author>
<published>2015-11-07T00:28:28Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.shady.money/linux/commit/?id=71baba4b92dc1fa1bc461742c6ab1942ec6034e9'/>
<id>urn:sha1:71baba4b92dc1fa1bc461742c6ab1942ec6034e9</id>
<content type='text'>
__GFP_WAIT was used to signal that the caller was in atomic context and
could not sleep.  Now it is possible to distinguish between true atomic
context and callers that are not willing to sleep.  The latter should
clear __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM so kswapd will still wake.  As clearing
__GFP_WAIT behaves differently, there is a risk that people will clear the
wrong flags.  This patch renames __GFP_WAIT to __GFP_RECLAIM to clearly
indicate what it does -- setting it allows all reclaim activity, clearing
them prevents it.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix build]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman &lt;mgorman@techsingularity.net&gt;
Acked-by: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.com&gt;
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner &lt;hannes@cmpxchg.org&gt;
Cc: Christoph Lameter &lt;cl@linux.com&gt;
Acked-by: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: Vitaly Wool &lt;vitalywool@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Rik van Riel &lt;riel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
</feed>
