Re: [PATCH] mm: slab: Only move management objects off-slab for sizes larger than KMALLOC_MIN_SIZE

[Catalin Marinas]

On Thu, Nov 05, 2015 at 05:31:39AM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Thu,  5 Nov 2015 11:50:35 +0000 Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Commit 8fc9cf420b36 ("slab: make more slab management structure off the
> > slab") enables off-slab management objects for sizes starting with
> > PAGE_SIZE >> 5. This means 128 bytes for a 4KB page configuration.
> > However, on systems with a KMALLOC_MIN_SIZE of 128 (arm64 in 4.4), such
> > optimisation does not make sense since the slab management allocation
> > would take 128 bytes anyway (even though freelist_size is 32) with the
> > additional overhead of another allocation.
> > 
> > This patch introduces an OFF_SLAB_MIN_SIZE macro which takes
> > KMALLOC_MIN_SIZE into account. It also solves a slab bug on arm64 where
> > the first kmalloc_cache to be initialised after slab_early_init = 0,
> > "kmalloc-128", fails to allocate off-slab management objects from the
> > same "kmalloc-128" cache.
> 
> That all seems to be quite minor stuff.

Apart from "it also solves a bug on arm64...". But I agree, the initial
commit log doesn't give any justification for cc stable.

> > Fixes: 8fc9cf420b36 ("slab: make more slab management structure off the slab")
> > Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> # 3.15+
> 
> Yet you believe the fix should be backported.
> 
> So, the usual refrain: when fixing a bug, please describe the end-user
> visible effects of that bug.

What about (unless you prefer this slightly more intrusive fix:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ports.sh.devel/50303):

------------------8<--------------------------