[PATCH] mm/page_alloc: fix deferred compaction accounting

From: fujunjie

Date: Tue May 26 2026 - 05:16:45 EST


COMPACT_DEFERRED means compaction did not start because past failures
caused the zone to be deferred. try_to_compact_pages() returns the
maximum result seen while walking the zonelist, so a final
COMPACT_DEFERRED result means no later zone reported that compaction
actually ran.

__alloc_pages_direct_compact() skips COMPACTSTALL and COMPACTFAIL
accounting when try_to_compact_pages() returns COMPACT_SKIPPED, but not
when it returns COMPACT_DEFERRED. A deferred-only direct compaction
attempt can therefore look like a stall, and then a failure if the
allocation still cannot be satisfied.

Treat COMPACT_DEFERRED like COMPACT_SKIPPED in this accounting path. If
a later zone runs compaction and returns a result above COMPACT_DEFERRED,
or compact_zone_order() reports COMPACT_SUCCESS for a captured page, the
final result is not COMPACT_DEFERRED and the existing accounting still
runs.

Signed-off-by: fujunjie <fujunjie1@xxxxxx>
---
mm/page_alloc.c | 3 ++-
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index 23c7298d3be2..ddeb79fa12db 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -4161,7 +4161,8 @@ __alloc_pages_direct_compact(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
psi_memstall_leave(&pflags);
delayacct_compact_end();

- if (*compact_result == COMPACT_SKIPPED)
+ if (*compact_result == COMPACT_SKIPPED ||
+ *compact_result == COMPACT_DEFERRED)
return NULL;
/*
* At least in one zone compaction wasn't deferred or skipped, so let's

base-commit: e8c2f9fdadee7cbc75134dc463c1e0d856d6e5c7
--
2.34.1