Re: [PATCH]: Clean up of __alloc_pages

Rohit Seth
2005-11-04T18:15:08Z

On Tue, 2005-11-01 at 12:14 +1100, Nick Piggin wrote:
> Rohit Seth wrote:
> > On Sat, 2005-10-29 at 12:33 +1000, Nick Piggin wrote:
>
> >>If you don't do this, then a GFP_HIGH allocator can allocate right
> >>down to its limit before it kicks kswapd, then it either will fail or
> >>will have to do direct reclaim.
> >>
> >
> >
> > You are right if there are only GFP_HIGH requests coming in then the
> > allocation will go down to (min - min/2) before kicking in kswapd.
> > Though if the requester is not ready to wait, there is another good shot
> > at allocation succeed before we get into direct reclaim (and this is
> > happening based on can_try_harder flag).
> >
>
> Still, it is a change in behaviour that I would rather not introduce
> with a cleanup patch (and is something we don't want to introduce anyway).
>
> So if you could fix that up it would be good.
>

Nick, sorry for not responding earlier.

I agree that it is slight change in behavior from original. I doubt
though it will impact any one in any negative way (may be for some
higher order allocations if at all). On a little positive side, less
frequent calls to kswapd for some cases and clear up the code a little
bit.

But I really don't want to get stuck here. The pcp traversal and
flushing is where I want to go next.

Thanks,
-rohit