diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'include/linux/gfp.h')
| -rw-r--r-- | include/linux/gfp.h | 56 |
1 files changed, 43 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/include/linux/gfp.h b/include/linux/gfp.h index 4c6656f1fee7..bcfb9f7c46f5 100644 --- a/include/linux/gfp.h +++ b/include/linux/gfp.h @@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ struct vm_area_struct; #define ___GFP_FS 0x80u #define ___GFP_COLD 0x100u #define ___GFP_NOWARN 0x200u -#define ___GFP_REPEAT 0x400u +#define ___GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL 0x400u #define ___GFP_NOFAIL 0x800u #define ___GFP_NORETRY 0x1000u #define ___GFP_MEMALLOC 0x2000u @@ -136,26 +136,56 @@ struct vm_area_struct; * * __GFP_RECLAIM is shorthand to allow/forbid both direct and kswapd reclaim. * - * __GFP_REPEAT: Try hard to allocate the memory, but the allocation attempt - * _might_ fail. This depends upon the particular VM implementation. + * The default allocator behavior depends on the request size. We have a concept + * of so called costly allocations (with order > PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER). + * !costly allocations are too essential to fail so they are implicitly + * non-failing by default (with some exceptions like OOM victims might fail so + * the caller still has to check for failures) while costly requests try to be + * not disruptive and back off even without invoking the OOM killer. + * The following three modifiers might be used to override some of these + * implicit rules + * + * __GFP_NORETRY: The VM implementation will try only very lightweight + * memory direct reclaim to get some memory under memory pressure (thus + * it can sleep). It will avoid disruptive actions like OOM killer. The + * caller must handle the failure which is quite likely to happen under + * heavy memory pressure. The flag is suitable when failure can easily be + * handled at small cost, such as reduced throughput + * + * __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL: The VM implementation will retry memory reclaim + * procedures that have previously failed if there is some indication + * that progress has been made else where. It can wait for other + * tasks to attempt high level approaches to freeing memory such as + * compaction (which removes fragmentation) and page-out. + * There is still a definite limit to the number of retries, but it is + * a larger limit than with __GFP_NORETRY. + * Allocations with this flag may fail, but only when there is + * genuinely little unused memory. While these allocations do not + * directly trigger the OOM killer, their failure indicates that + * the system is likely to need to use the OOM killer soon. The + * caller must handle failure, but can reasonably do so by failing + * a higher-level request, or completing it only in a much less + * efficient manner. + * If the allocation does fail, and the caller is in a position to + * free some non-essential memory, doing so could benefit the system + * as a whole. * * __GFP_NOFAIL: The VM implementation _must_ retry infinitely: the caller - * cannot handle allocation failures. New users should be evaluated carefully - * (and the flag should be used only when there is no reasonable failure - * policy) but it is definitely preferable to use the flag rather than - * opencode endless loop around allocator. - * - * __GFP_NORETRY: The VM implementation must not retry indefinitely and will - * return NULL when direct reclaim and memory compaction have failed to allow - * the allocation to succeed. The OOM killer is not called with the current - * implementation. + * cannot handle allocation failures. The allocation could block + * indefinitely but will never return with failure. Testing for + * failure is pointless. + * New users should be evaluated carefully (and the flag should be + * used only when there is no reasonable failure policy) but it is + * definitely preferable to use the flag rather than opencode endless + * loop around allocator. + * Using this flag for costly allocations is _highly_ discouraged. */ #define __GFP_IO ((__force gfp_t)___GFP_IO) #define __GFP_FS ((__force gfp_t)___GFP_FS) #define __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM ((__force gfp_t)___GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM) /* Caller can reclaim */ #define __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM ((__force gfp_t)___GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM) /* kswapd can wake */ #define __GFP_RECLAIM ((__force gfp_t)(___GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM|___GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM)) -#define __GFP_REPEAT ((__force gfp_t)___GFP_REPEAT) +#define __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL ((__force gfp_t)___GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL) #define __GFP_NOFAIL ((__force gfp_t)___GFP_NOFAIL) #define __GFP_NORETRY ((__force gfp_t)___GFP_NORETRY) |