linux/Documentation/vm
Mel Gorman d0164adc89 mm, page_alloc: distinguish between being unable to sleep, unwilling to sleep and avoiding waking kswapd
__GFP_WAIT has been used to identify atomic context in callers that hold
spinlocks or are in interrupts.  They are expected to be high priority and
have access one of two watermarks lower than "min" which can be referred
to as the "atomic reserve".  __GFP_HIGH users get access to the first
lower watermark and can be called the "high priority reserve".

Over time, callers had a requirement to not block when fallback options
were available.  Some have abused __GFP_WAIT leading to a situation where
an optimisitic allocation with a fallback option can access atomic
reserves.

This patch uses __GFP_ATOMIC to identify callers that are truely atomic,
cannot sleep and have no alternative.  High priority users continue to use
__GFP_HIGH.  __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM identifies callers that can sleep and
are willing to enter direct reclaim.  __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM to identify
callers that want to wake kswapd for background reclaim.  __GFP_WAIT is
redefined as a caller that is willing to enter direct reclaim and wake
kswapd for background reclaim.

This patch then converts a number of sites

o __GFP_ATOMIC is used by callers that are high priority and have memory
  pools for those requests. GFP_ATOMIC uses this flag.

o Callers that have a limited mempool to guarantee forward progress clear
  __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM but keep __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM. bio allocations fall
  into this category where kswapd will still be woken but atomic reserves
  are not used as there is a one-entry mempool to guarantee progress.

o Callers that are checking if they are non-blocking should use the
  helper gfpflags_allow_blocking() where possible. This is because
  checking for __GFP_WAIT as was done historically now can trigger false
  positives. Some exceptions like dm-crypt.c exist where the code intent
  is clearer if __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM is used instead of the helper due to
  flag manipulations.

o Callers that built their own GFP flags instead of starting with GFP_KERNEL
  and friends now also need to specify __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM.

The first key hazard to watch out for is callers that removed __GFP_WAIT
and was depending on access to atomic reserves for inconspicuous reasons.
In some cases it may be appropriate for them to use __GFP_HIGH.

The second key hazard is callers that assembled their own combination of
GFP flags instead of starting with something like GFP_KERNEL.  They may
now wish to specify __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM.  It's almost certainly harmless
if it's missed in most cases as other activity will wake kswapd.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Vitaly Wool <vitalywool@gmail.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-11-06 17:50:42 -08:00
..
.gitignore
00-INDEX mm: introduce idle page tracking 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00
active_mm.txt
balance mm, page_alloc: distinguish between being unable to sleep, unwilling to sleep and avoiding waking kswapd 2015-11-06 17:50:42 -08:00
cleancache.txt cleancache: forbid overriding cleancache_ops 2015-04-14 16:49:03 -07:00
frontswap.txt doc: fix quite a few typos within Documentation 2012-11-19 14:28:24 +01:00
highmem.txt
hugetlbpage.txt Documentation: update libhugetlbfs location and use for testing 2015-09-08 15:35:28 -07:00
hwpoison.txt mm/memory-failure.c: support use of a dedicated thread to handle SIGBUS(BUS_MCEERR_AO) 2014-06-04 16:54:13 -07:00
idle_page_tracking.txt mm: introduce idle page tracking 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00
ksm.txt ksm: add some comments 2013-02-23 17:50:23 -08:00
numa doc: fix broken references 2011-09-27 18:08:04 +02:00
numa_memory_policy.txt Documentation/vm/numa_memory_policy.txt: fix wrong document in numa_memory_policy.txt 2014-04-18 16:40:08 -07:00
overcommit-accounting mm: add overcommit_kbytes sysctl variable 2014-01-21 16:19:44 -08:00
page_migration mm: page migration avoid touching newpage until no going back 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
page_owner.txt Documentation: add new page_owner document 2014-12-13 12:42:48 -08:00
pagemap.txt proc: export idle flag via kpageflags 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00
remap_file_pages.txt mm: replace remap_file_pages() syscall with emulation 2015-02-10 14:30:30 -08:00
slub.txt Doc/slub: document slabinfo-gnuplot.sh script 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
soft-dirty.txt mm: track vma changes with VM_SOFTDIRTY bit 2013-09-11 15:57:56 -07:00
split_page_table_lock x86, mm: do not leak page->ptl for pmd page tables 2013-11-21 16:42:28 -08:00
transhuge.txt Documentation/vm/transhuge.txt: add information about max_ptes_swap 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
unevictable-lru.txt mm: rmap use pte lock not mmap_sem to set PageMlocked 2015-11-05 19:34:48 -08:00
userfaultfd.txt userfaultfd: change the read API to return a uffd_msg 2015-09-04 16:54:41 -07:00
zsmalloc.txt zsmalloc: zsmalloc documentation 2015-04-15 16:35:21 -07:00
zswap.txt zswap: update docs for runtime-changeable attributes 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00