Re: [patch] arch: remove __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations

Andrew Morton
2010-09-28T21:36:55Z

On Tue, 28 Sep 2010 03:45:10 -0700 (PDT)
David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> wrote:

> Order-0 allocations, including quicklist_alloc(), are always under
> PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER, so they loop endlessly in the page allocator
> already without the need for __GFP_REPEAT.

That's only true for the current implementation of the page allocator.

If we were to change the page allocator behaviour to not do that (and
we change it daily!) then all those callsites which wanted __GFP_REPEAT
behaviour will get broken. So someone would need to go back and work
out how to unbreak them, if we remembered.

Plus there's presumably some documentary benefit in leaving the
__GFP_REPEATs in there.

Why are those __GFP_REPEATs present at those callsites? What were
developers trying to achieve?

--
To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in
the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM,
see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ .
Don't email: email@kvack.org