[PATCH v3 00/16] mm: Some cleanups for page allocator APIs
From: Brendan Jackman
Date: Mon Jun 29 2026 - 09:33:50 EST
This is based on mm-new, it depends on moving alloc_tag to mm/ [0].
[0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/aj5QBtJcphPElczI@lucifer/
Some tweaks and cleanups for page allocator entrypoint and flags. This
is motivated by preparation for __GFP_UNMAPPED [1] (which will probably
become ALLOC_UNMAPPED in its next iteration), but all this is supposed
to be an improvement to the codebase in its own right: unifying code
paths, reducing API surface, and removing GFP flags.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260320-page_alloc-unmapped-v2-0-28bf1bd54f41@xxxxxxxxxx/
This started with unifying __alloc_frozen_pages[_nolock]_noprof() and
expanded from there.
Unifying the nolock allocator entrypoint with the normal allocator
entrypoint means adding an alloc_flags argument to the later (only
exposed within mm/). This presents an opportunity to take advantage of
that arg to remove some GFP flags, if we add that alloc_flags arg a bit
more broadly to allocator entrypoints.
To distinguish between mm-internal and "public" allocator entrypoints,
it makes sense to use the __ prefix. There are already some public APIs
with that prefix. For *alloc_pages*, just removing those variants seems
like a nice cleanup anyway, so do that. For get_free_pages, the "__"
variant is the _only_ variant and it's very widely used, so it doesn't
seem worthwhile to modify that. Therefore, scope this "__" change
specifically to the *alloc_pages* API, which means we leave the
*folio_alloc* API untouched too, even though that could probably be
cleaned up if so desired.
Tested:
- KVM, mm, and BPF selftests in a QEMU VM
- kunit.py on x86_64
- For the ALLOC_NO_CODETAG bits I just booted a VM and read
/proc/allocinfo. I confirmed that if I remove ALLOC_NO_CODETAG, the
kernel crashes in early boot, so I was at least booting code that
depends on this logic.
I used Google's internal version of Antigravity (AI coding harness) to
do the repetitive bits, those commits are marked with Assisted-by, the
rest is manual.
Signed-off-by: Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
Changes in v3:
- Created mm/page_alloc.h
- Fixed EXPORT_SYMBOL() issues
- Reworded commit messages per Sashiko's pointers
- Dropped rename of alloc_flags arg in prepare_alloc_pages() (Suren)
- Renamed gfp_to_alloc_flags_nonblocking() too after rebasing onto:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260623004600.113347-1-jp.kobryn@xxxxxxxxx/
- Link to v2: https://patch.msgid.link/20260622-alloc-trylock-v2-0-31f31367d420@xxxxxxxxxx
Changes in v2:
- Fixed up whitespace in nolock unification patch
- Introduced ALLOC_DEFAULT to replace literal 0 for alloc_flags
- All other patches are new
- Link to v1: https://patch.msgid.link/20260617-alloc-trylock-v1-1-83fd7858832e@xxxxxxxxxx
---
Brendan Jackman (16):
mm/page_alloc: rename ALLOC_TRYLOCK -> ALLOC_NOLOCK
mm/page_alloc: some renames to clarify alloc_flags scopes
mm: name some args in a function declaration
mm: Split out internal page_alloc.h
mm/page_alloc: unify __alloc_frozen_pages[_nolock]_noprof()
mm/page_alloc: relax GFP WARN in nolock allocs
mm: move some stuff to mm/page_alloc.h
perf/x86/intel: Use higher-level allocator API
KVM: VMX: Use higher-level allocator API
x86/virt: Use higher-level allocator API
sgi-xp: Use higher-level allocator API
net/funeth: Switch to higher-level allocator API
mm: Remove __alloc_pages_node()
mm: Move __alloc_pages() to mm/page_alloc.h
mm: replace __GFP_NO_CODETAG with ALLOC_NO_CODETAG
mm: remove the __GFP_NO_OBJ_EXT flag
Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/cpusets.rst | 2 +-
Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst | 2 +-
MAINTAINERS | 1 +
arch/x86/events/intel/ds.c | 6 +-
arch/x86/kvm/vmx/vmx.c | 2 +-
arch/x86/virt/hw.c | 2 +-
drivers/misc/sgi-xp/xpc_uv.c | 2 +-
drivers/net/ethernet/fungible/funeth/funeth_rx.c | 2 +-
include/linux/gfp.h | 54 +---
mm/alloc_tag.c | 22 +-
mm/compaction.c | 5 +-
mm/hugetlb.c | 4 +-
mm/internal.h | 253 ------------------
mm/khugepaged.c | 1 +
mm/memory-failure.c | 1 +
mm/memory_hotplug.c | 1 +
mm/mempolicy.c | 11 +-
mm/mm_init.c | 1 +
mm/page_alloc.c | 259 ++++++++++---------
mm/page_alloc.h | 316 +++++++++++++++++++++++
mm/page_frag_cache.c | 6 +-
mm/page_isolation.c | 1 +
mm/page_owner.c | 2 +-
mm/show_mem.c | 1 +
mm/slub.c | 7 +-
mm/swap.c | 1 +
mm/vmscan.c | 1 +
mm/vmstat.c | 1 +
tools/include/linux/gfp_types.h | 7 -
29 files changed, 506 insertions(+), 468 deletions(-)
---
base-commit: ec005628e9dbcef26b761fa860f264fe6e5fd690
change-id: 20260617-alloc-trylock-14ad37dab337
Best regards,
--
Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@xxxxxxxxxx>