Since commit cc638f329ef6 ("mm, thp: tweak reclaim/compaction effort of local-only and all-node allocations"), THP page fault allocations have settled on the following scheme (from the commit log): 1. local node only THP allocation with no reclaim, just compaction. 2. for madvised VMA's or when synchronous compaction is enabled always - THP allocation from any node with effort determined by global defrag setting and VMA madvise 3. fallback to base pages on any node Recent customer reports however revealed we have a gap in step 1 above. What we have seen is excessive reclaim due to THP page faults on a NUMA node that's close to its high watermark, while other nodes have plenty of free memory. The problem with step 1 is that it promises no reclaim after the compaction attempt, however reclaim is only avoided for certain compaction outcomes (deferred, or skipped due to insufficient free base pages), and not e.g. when compaction is actually performed but fails (we did see compact_fail vmstat counter increasing). THP page faults can therefore exhibit a zone_reclaim_mode-like behavior, which is not the intention. Thus add a check for __GFP_THISNODE that corresponds to this exact situation and prevents continuing with reclaim/compaction once the initial compaction attempt isn't successful in allocating the page. Note that commit cc638f329ef6 has not introduced this over-reclaim possibility; it appears to exist in some form since commit 2f0799a0ffc0 ("mm, thp: restore node-local hugepage allocations"). Followup commits b39d0ee2632d ("mm, page_alloc: avoid expensive reclaim when compaction may not succeed") and cc638f329ef6 have moved in the right direction, but left the abovementioned gap. Fixes: 2f0799a0ffc0 ("mm, thp: restore node-local hugepage allocations") Acked-by: Michal Hocko Acked-by: Johannes Weiner Acked-by: Pedro Falcato Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka --- This is the patch 1 taken from the RFC [1] with review tags applied, and should be ready for exposing in linux-next. The rest of [1] will be another cleanup RFC with changes according to feedback and likely to result in more discussions, delayed by holidays etc. So will be posted separately so the fix is not held up. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251216-thp-thisnode-tweak-v1-0-0e499d13d2eb@suse.cz/ --- mm/page_alloc.c | 14 ++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+) diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c index 822e05f1a964..6f5e1b902999 100644 --- a/mm/page_alloc.c +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c @@ -4788,6 +4788,20 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, compact_result == COMPACT_DEFERRED) goto nopage; + /* + * THP page faults may attempt local node only first, + * but are then allowed to only compact, not reclaim, + * see alloc_pages_mpol(). + * + * Compaction can fail for other reasons than those + * checked above and we don't want such THP allocations + * to put reclaim pressure on a single node in a + * situation where other nodes might have plenty of + * available memory. + */ + if (gfp_mask & __GFP_THISNODE) + goto nopage; + /* * Looks like reclaim/compaction is worth trying, but * sync compaction could be very expensive, so keep --- base-commit: 8f0b4cce4481fb22653697cced8d0d04027cb1e8 change-id: 20251219-costly-noretry-thisnode-fix-b9ec46b62c1b Best regards, -- Vlastimil Babka