Re: [PATCH v5 00/18] mm: Some cleanups for page allocator APIs

From: Vlastimil Babka (SUSE)

Date: Fri Jul 03 2026 - 08:48:35 EST


On 7/3/26 14:31, Brendan Jackman wrote:
> Based on mm-new.

Seems ready for mm-new to me. I suspect most further non-trivial page
allocator work will conflict, so better have it in mm to be based upon.

I was worried about Johannes' defrag fixes [1] that were supposed to be
stable bacported and thus would be better to add (the next revision) to
mm-new first. But seems like if I apply this series on mm-new, and then [1]
on top, nothing conflicts, so the ordering shouldn't matter.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260626182215.1107966-1-hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx/

> This depends on moving alloc_tag to mm/:
> 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 v5:
> - Just trivial non-functional fixes.
> - Link to v4: https://patch.msgid.link/20260702-alloc-trylock-v4-0-0af8ff387e80@xxxxxxxxxx
>
> Changes in v4:
> - Fixed some (harmless) missing applications of ac->alloc_flags (local
> Sashiko)
> - Fixed various build issues.
> - Note that Sashiko pointed out a KMSAN build issue [0], I have
> fixed it but KMSAN builds are currently broken by objtool [1]. At least
> mm/kmsan/init.c compiles.
> [2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260629141642.628271F00A3D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
> [3] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260630104434.GC751831@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/t/#u
> - Avoided setting ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT under ALLOC_NOLOCK (Sashiko, Harry)
> - Added patch to tweak alloc_flags_cma() interface (Vlastimil)
> - More commit messages fixups (various)
> - Added patch to create can_spin_trylock() (Harry)
> - Link to v3: https://patch.msgid.link/20260629-alloc-trylock-v3-0-57bef0eadbc2@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 (17):
> 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/page_alloc: drop alloc_flags arg from alloc_flags_cma()
> mm: factor out can_spin_trylock()
>
> Vlastimil Babka (SUSE) (1):
> 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 | 5 +-
> drivers/net/ethernet/fungible/funeth/funeth_rx.c | 2 +-
> include/linux/alloc_tag.h | 4 +-
> include/linux/gfp.h | 54 +---
> include/linux/gfp_types.h | 7 -
> include/linux/skbuff.h | 2 +-
> include/trace/events/mmflags.h | 10 +-
> mm/alloc_tag.c | 23 +-
> mm/compaction.c | 5 +-
> mm/hugetlb.c | 4 +-
> mm/internal.h | 275 ++------------------
> mm/khugepaged.c | 1 +
> mm/kmsan/init.c | 2 +-
> mm/memory-failure.c | 1 +
> mm/memory_hotplug.c | 1 +
> mm/mempolicy.c | 11 +-
> mm/migrate.c | 1 +
> mm/mm_init.c | 1 +
> mm/page_alloc.c | 269 ++++++++++---------
> mm/page_alloc.h | 312 +++++++++++++++++++++++
> mm/page_frag_cache.c | 6 +-
> mm/page_isolation.c | 1 +
> mm/page_owner.c | 2 +-
> mm/page_reporting.c | 1 +
> mm/show_mem.c | 1 +
> mm/shuffle.c | 1 +
> mm/slub.c | 17 +-
> mm/swap.c | 1 +
> mm/vmscan.c | 1 +
> mm/vmstat.c | 1 +
> tools/include/linux/gfp_types.h | 7 -
> 37 files changed, 536 insertions(+), 508 deletions(-)
> ---
> base-commit: 32af3ff0925368eff29b2fed62f154150eb5dc10
> change-id: 20260617-alloc-trylock-14ad37dab337
>
> Best regards,
> --
> Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@xxxxxxxxxx>
>