[PATCH 2/5] mm: Document __GFP_NOFAIL must be blockable

Barry Song
2024-07-24T08:56:21Z

From: Barry Song <v-songbaohua@oppo.com>

Non-blocking allocation with __GFP_NOFAIL is not supported and may
still result in NULL pointers (if we don't return NULL, we result
in busy-loop within non-sleepable contexts):

static inline struct page *
__alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
struct alloc_context *ac)
{
...
/*
* Make sure that __GFP_NOFAIL request doesn't leak out and make sure
* we always retry
*/
if (gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL) {
/*
* All existing users of the __GFP_NOFAIL are blockable, so warn
* of any new users that actually require GFP_NOWAIT
*/
if (WARN_ON_ONCE_GFP(!can_direct_reclaim, gfp_mask))
goto fail;
...
}
...
fail:
warn_alloc(gfp_mask, ac->nodemask,
"page allocation failure: order:%u", order);
got_pg:
return page;
}

Highlight this in the documentation of __GFP_NOFAIL so that non-mm
subsystems can reject any illegal usage of __GFP_NOFAIL with
GFP_ATOMIC, GFP_NOWAIT, etc.

Signed-off-by: Barry Song <v-songbaohua@oppo.com>
---
include/linux/gfp_types.h | 2 ++
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)

diff --git a/include/linux/gfp_types.h b/include/linux/gfp_types.h
index 313be4ad79fd..0dad2c7914be 100644
--- a/include/linux/gfp_types.h
+++ b/include/linux/gfp_types.h
@@ -246,6 +246,8 @@ enum {
* cannot handle allocation failures. The allocation could block
* indefinitely but will never return with failure. Testing for
* failure is pointless.
+ * It _must_ be blockable and used together with __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM.
+ * It should _never_ be used in non-sleepable contexts.
* New users should be evaluated carefully (and the flag should be
* used only when there is no reasonable failure policy) but it is
* definitely preferable to use the flag rather than opencode endless
--
2.34.1