Re: [PATCH] zram/zcomp: use GFP_NOIO to allocate streams

Sergey Senozhatsky
2015-11-24T00:29:29Z

On (11/23/15 15:18), Andrew Morton wrote:
[..]
> > --- a/drivers/block/zram/zcomp_lz4.c
> > +++ b/drivers/block/zram/zcomp_lz4.c
> > @@ -20,10 +20,13 @@ static void *zcomp_lz4_create(void)
> > void *ret;
> >
> > ret = kzalloc(LZ4_MEM_COMPRESS,
> > - __GFP_NORETRY|__GFP_NOWARN|__GFP_NOMEMALLOC);
> > - if (!ret)
> > - ret = vzalloc(LZ4_MEM_COMPRESS);
> > - return ret;
> > + __GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_NOWARN | __GFP_NOMEMALLOC);
>
> But here we've still lost __GFP_RECLAIM, unnecessarily. And it's quite
> unclear why __GFP_NORETRY and __GFP_NOMEMALLOC are being used.

__GFP_NORETRY

we are guaranteed to have at least one compression stream, so sooner or
later every IO operation will be served. any IO that has failed in
zcomp_lz4_create() or zcomp_lzo_create() will simply wait for already
available compression stream to become idle. so this allocation is not
so dramatically important - we just increase the level of parallelism
(N idle streams let N IO operations to execute concurrently). apart from
that we are in a low memory condition (or whatever was the reason the
kernel failed to allocate LZ4_MEM_COMPRESS or LZO1X_MEM_COMPRESS) and
we can avoid pressuring the kernel furher.

for the same reason __GFP_NOMEMALLOC is used -- we don't want to waste
an emergency memory for compression streams.

I agree on __GFP_RECLAIM. Thanks.

> IOW, why not simply use (GFP_NOIO|__GFP_NOWARN)?

GFP_NOIO | __GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_NOWARN | __GFP_NOMEMALLOC ?

-ss