[PATCH 4.4 23/37] kaiser: _pgd_alloc() without __GFP_REPEAT to avoid stalls

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

4.4-stable review patch.  If anyone has any objections, please let me know.

------------------

From: Hugh Dickins <hughd@xxxxxxxxxx>


Synthetic filesystem mempressure testing has shown softlockups, with
hour-long page allocation stalls, and pgd_alloc() trying for order:1
with __GFP_REPEAT in one of the backtraces each time.

That's _pgd_alloc() going for a Kaiser double-pgd, using the __GFP_REPEAT
common to all page table allocations, but actually having no effect on
order:0 (see should_alloc_oom() and should_continue_reclaim() in this
tree, but beware that ports to another tree might behave differently).

Order:1 stack allocation has been working satisfactorily without
__GFP_REPEAT forever, and page table allocation only asks __GFP_REPEAT
for awkward occasions in a long-running process: it's not appropriate
at fork or exec time, and seems to be doing much more harm than good:
getting those contiguous pages under very heavy mempressure can be
hard (though even without it, Kaiser does generate more mempressure).

Mask out that __GFP_REPEAT inside _pgd_alloc().  Why not take it out
of the PGALLOG_GFP altogether, as v4.7 commit a3a9a59d2067 ("x86: get
rid of superfluous __GFP_REPEAT") did?  Because I think that might
make a difference to our page table memcg charging, which I'd prefer
not to interfere with at this time.

hughd adds: __alloc_pages_slowpath() in the 4.4.89-stable tree handles
__GFP_REPEAT a little differently than in prod kernel or 3.18.72-stable,
so it may not always be exactly a no-op on order:0 pages, as said above;
but I think still appropriate to omit it from Kaiser or non-Kaiser pgd.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@xxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@xxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
 arch/x86/mm/pgtable.c |    6 ++++--
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

--- a/arch/x86/mm/pgtable.c
+++ b/arch/x86/mm/pgtable.c
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 #include <asm/fixmap.h>
 #include <asm/mtrr.h>
 
-#define PGALLOC_GFP GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_NOTRACK | __GFP_REPEAT | __GFP_ZERO
+#define PGALLOC_GFP (GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_NOTRACK | __GFP_REPEAT | __GFP_ZERO)
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_HIGHPTE
 #define PGALLOC_USER_GFP __GFP_HIGHMEM
@@ -354,7 +354,9 @@ static inline void _pgd_free(pgd_t *pgd)
 
 static inline pgd_t *_pgd_alloc(void)
 {
-	return (pgd_t *)__get_free_pages(PGALLOC_GFP, PGD_ALLOCATION_ORDER);
+	/* No __GFP_REPEAT: to avoid page allocation stalls in order-1 case */
+	return (pgd_t *)__get_free_pages(PGALLOC_GFP & ~__GFP_REPEAT,
+					 PGD_ALLOCATION_ORDER);
 }
 
 static inline void _pgd_free(pgd_t *pgd)