Re: [PATCH 12/14] mm, oom: protect !costly allocations some more

[Michal Hocko]

On Wed 04-05-16 15:31:12, Joonsoo Kim wrote:
> On Wed, May 04, 2016 at 03:01:24PM +0900, Joonsoo Kim wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 03:47:25PM -0400, Michal Hocko wrote:
[...]
> > > @@ -3408,6 +3456,17 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
> > >  				 no_progress_loops))
> > >  		goto retry;
> > >  
> > > +	/*
> > > +	 * It doesn't make any sense to retry for the compaction if the order-0
> > > +	 * reclaim is not able to make any progress because the current
> > > +	 * implementation of the compaction depends on the sufficient amount
> > > +	 * of free memory (see __compaction_suitable)
> > > +	 */
> > > +	if (did_some_progress > 0 &&
> > > +			should_compact_retry(order, compact_result,
> > > +				&migration_mode, compaction_retries))
> > 
> > Checking did_some_progress on each round have subtle corner case. Think
> > about following situation.
> > 
> > round, compaction, did_some_progress, compaction
> > 0, defer, 1
> > 0, defer, 1
> > 0, defer, 1
> > 0, defer, 1
> > 0, defer, 0
> 
> Oops...Example should be below one.
> 
> 0, defer, 1
> 1, defer, 1
> 2, defer, 1
> 3, defer, 1
> 4, defer, 0

I am not sure I understand. The point of the check is that if the
reclaim doesn't make _any_ progress then checking the result of the
compaction after it didn't lead to a successful allocation just doesn't
make any sense. If the compaction deferred all the time then we have a
bug in the compaction. Vlastimil is already working on a code which
should make the compaction more ready for !costly requests but that is a
separate topic IMO.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs