1ebbb21811b7 ("mm/page_alloc: explicitly define how __GFP_HIGH non-blocking allocations accesses reserves") stopped handing out reserve access for ALLOC_NON_BLOCK on its own: the extra 25% below the min watermark is now only granted on top of ALLOC_MIN_RESERVE. But the flag was left in ALLOC_RESERVES, which produces something odd: With the ALLOC_RESERVES match, __zone_watermark_unusable_free() doesn't subtract the free highatomic pages for them. So in the slowpath, they get to consume regular blocks below the min watermark by the number of free highatomic pages. The highatomic reserve is capped at 1% of the zone, which on any decently sized machine is a multiple of the min watermark: GFP_NOWAIT can drain regular memory to zero. The user-visible result is brutal hiccups during bursts of GFP_NOWAIT allocations under memory pressure. This was found in review and reproduced with a synthetic burst, not observed in production, but the sequence of events is a realistic one: On a 32G box with an anonymous working set, swap, and a filled 290M highatomic reserve, a GFP_NOWAIT burst drove regular free memory in the 28G Normal zone (min=60M) to 28M, 0.8M and 0.6M in three runs. Swapout failed to allocate its swap table, reclaim scanned 13M pages to reclaim 200k, page faults stalled for tens to hundreds of milliseconds. The machine survives it, but not by design: direct reclaimers eventually fail and start unreserving highatomic blocks, until the allocation succeeds or the reserve is gone and the OOM killer runs. That reserve exists for high-order atomic allocations; here it is destroyed to bail out a GFP_NOWAIT consumer that was never entitled to the memory. Remove ALLOC_NON_BLOCK from ALLOC_RESERVES. With that, the GFP_NOWAIT burst is stopped short at the min watermark. No direct reclaim, no stalls, no failed allocations, and the highatomic reserve stays intact for the requests it exists for. __zone_watermark_ok() is unaffected, since everything it keys on ALLOC_NON_BLOCK is already nested under ALLOC_MIN_RESERVE. Update the flag comments accordingly: ALLOC_NON_BLOCK just means the caller can't block; the reserve math belongs with ALLOC_MIN_RESERVE. GFP_ATOMIC order-0 requests have a milder version of the same problem. Through ALLOC_MIN_RESERVE they also count the free highatomic pages in their watermark check, but rmqueue_buddy() serves them regular pages first and only falls back to the reserve once those are gone. They can still push regular free memory to 37.5% of min minus the free highatomic pages before the reserve is touched. Unlike GFP_NOWAIT they are entitled to the reserve, so this needs the watermark check and the freelist order reworked together, and is left to a separate patch. Fixes: 1ebbb21811b7 ("mm/page_alloc: explicitly define how __GFP_HIGH non-blocking allocations accesses reserves") Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner --- mm/page_alloc.h | 11 +++++------ 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.h b/mm/page_alloc.h index 9c3c2830acb0..7097ea1805f6 100644 --- a/mm/page_alloc.h +++ b/mm/page_alloc.h @@ -32,12 +32,11 @@ #define ALLOC_OOM ALLOC_NO_WATERMARKS #endif -#define ALLOC_NON_BLOCK 0x10 /* Caller cannot block. Allow access - * to 25% of the min watermark or - * 62.5% if __GFP_HIGH is set. - */ +#define ALLOC_NON_BLOCK 0x10 /* Caller cannot block. */ #define ALLOC_MIN_RESERVE 0x20 /* __GFP_HIGH set. Allow access to 50% - * of the min watermark. + * of the min watermark, or 62.5% if + * the caller cannot block either + * (ALLOC_NON_BLOCK). */ #define ALLOC_CPUSET 0x40 /* check for correct cpuset */ #define ALLOC_CMA 0x80 /* allow allocations from CMA areas */ @@ -58,7 +57,7 @@ #define ALLOC_NO_CODETAG 0x1000 /* Flags that allow allocations below the min watermark. */ -#define ALLOC_RESERVES (ALLOC_NON_BLOCK|ALLOC_MIN_RESERVE|ALLOC_HIGHATOMIC|ALLOC_OOM) +#define ALLOC_RESERVES (ALLOC_MIN_RESERVE|ALLOC_HIGHATOMIC|ALLOC_OOM) /* Flags that mean GFP_ATOMIC */ #define ALLOC_MASK_ATOMIC (ALLOC_NON_BLOCK|ALLOC_MIN_RESERVE) -- 2.56.0