Re: [patch] mm: memcg: do not declare OOM from __GFP_NOFAIL allocations

David Rientjes
2013-11-27T01:01:43Z

On Fri, 22 Nov 2013, Johannes Weiner wrote:

> diff --git a/mm/memcontrol.c b/mm/memcontrol.c
> index 13b9d0f..cc4f9cb 100644
> --- a/mm/memcontrol.c
> +++ b/mm/memcontrol.c
> @@ -2677,6 +2677,9 @@ static int __mem_cgroup_try_charge(struct mm_struct *mm,
> if (unlikely(task_in_memcg_oom(current)))
> goto bypass;
>
> + if (gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL)
> + oom = false;
> +
> /*
> * We always charge the cgroup the mm_struct belongs to.
> * The mm_struct's mem_cgroup changes on task migration if the

Sorry, I don't understand this. What happens in the following scenario:

- memory.usage_in_bytes == memory.limit_in_bytes,

- memcg reclaim fails to reclaim memory, and

- all processes (perhaps only one) attached to the memcg are doing one of
the over dozen __GFP_NOFAIL allocations in the kernel?

How do we make forward progress if you cannot oom kill something?