Re: [PATCH] allocation looping + kswapd CPU cycles

Mark Hemment
2001-05-10T11:49:59Z

On Wed, 9 May 2001, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> On Wed, 9 May 2001, Mark Hemment wrote:
> > Could introduce another allocation flag (__GFP_FAIL?) which is or'ed
> > with a __GFP_WAIT to limit the looping?
>
> __GFP_FAIL is in the -ac tree already and it is being used by the bounce
> buffer allocation code.

Thanks for the pointer.

For non-zero order allocations, the test against __GFP_FAIL is a little
too soon; it would be better after we've tried to reclaim pages from the
inactive-clean list. Any nasty side effects to this?

Plus, the code still prevents PF_MEMALLOC processes from using the
inactive-clean list for non-zero order allocations. As the trend seems to
be to make zero and non-zero allocations 'equivalent', shouldn't this
restriction to lifted?

Mark