[PATCH 3/7] mempool: fix first round failure behavior

From: Tejun Heo
Date: Thu Dec 22 2011 - 16:45:45 EST


mempool modifies gfp_mask so that the backing allocator doesn't try
too hard or trigger warning message when there's pool to fall back on.
In addition, for the first try, it removes __GFP_WAIT and IO, so that
it doesn't trigger reclaim or wait when allocation can be fulfilled
from pool; however, when that allocation fails and pool is empty too,
it waits for the pool to be replenished before retrying.

Allocation which could have succeeded after a bit of reclaim has to
wait on the reserved items and it's not like mempool doesn't retry
with __GFP_WAIT and IO. It just does that *after* someone returns an
element, pointlessly delaying things.

Fix it by retrying immediately if the first round of allocation
attempts w/o __GFP_WAIT and IO fails.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
mm/mempool.c | 13 +++++++++++--
1 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/mempool.c b/mm/mempool.c
index e3a802a..6326cc6 100644
--- a/mm/mempool.c
+++ b/mm/mempool.c
@@ -221,14 +221,23 @@ repeat_alloc:
return element;
}

- /* We must not sleep in the GFP_ATOMIC case */
+ /*
+ * We use gfp mask w/o __GFP_WAIT or IO for the first round. If
+ * alloc failed with that and @pool was empty, retry immediately.
+ */
+ if (gfp_temp != gfp_mask) {
+ gfp_temp = gfp_mask;
+ spin_unlock_irqrestore(&pool->lock, flags);
+ goto repeat_alloc;
+ }
+
+ /* We must not sleep if !__GFP_WAIT */
if (!(gfp_mask & __GFP_WAIT)) {
spin_unlock_irqrestore(&pool->lock, flags);
return NULL;
}

/* Let's wait for someone else to return an element to @pool */
- gfp_temp = gfp_mask;
init_wait(&wait);
prepare_to_wait(&pool->wait, &wait, TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);

--
1.7.3.1

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