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SubjectRe: [RFC] propagate gfp_t to page table alloc functions
(2012/04/25 9:25), Andrew Morton wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:05:12 +0900
> KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> wrote:
>
>> (2012/04/25 8:55), KOSAKI Motohiro wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 7:49 PM, KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki
>>> <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> wrote:
>>>> (2012/04/25 6:30), Andrew Morton wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:48:29 +1000
>>>>> Nick Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hmm, there are several places to use GFP_NOIO and GFP_NOFS even, GFP_ATOMIC.
>>>>>>> I believe it's not trivial now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> They're all buggy then. Unfortunately not through any real fault of their own.
>>>>>
>>>>> There are gruesome problems in block/blk-throttle.c (thread "mempool,
>>>>> percpu, blkcg: fix percpu stat allocation and remove stats_lock"). It
>>>>> wants to do an alloc_percpu()->vmalloc() from the IO submission path,
>>>>> under GFP_NOIO.
>>>>>
>>>>> Changing vmalloc() to take a gfp_t does make lots of sense, although I
>>>>> worry a bit about making vmalloc() easier to use!
>>>>>
>>>>> I do wonder whether the whole scheme of explicitly passing a gfp_t was
>>>>> a mistake and that the allocation context should be part of the task
>>>>> context. ie: pass the allocation mode via *current.
>>>>
>>>> yes...that's very interesting.
>>>
>>> I think GFP_ATOMIC is used non task context too. ;-)
>>
>> Hmm, in interrupt context or some ? Can't we detect it ?
>
> There are lots of practical details and I haven't begun to think it
> through, mainly because it Isn't Going To Happen!
>
> For example how do we handle spin_lock()? Does spin_lock() now do
>
> gfp_t spin_lock_2(spinlock_t *lock)
> {
> gfp_t old_gfp = set_current_gfp(GFP_ATOMIC);
> spin_lock(lock);
> return old_gfp;
> }
>
> void spin_unlock_2(spinlock_t *lock, gfp_t old_gfp)
> {
> spin_unlock(lock);
> set_current_gfp(old_gfp);
> }
>
> Well that's bad. Currently we require programmers to keep track of
> what context they're running in. So they think about what they're
> doing. If we made it this easy, we'd see a big proliferation of
> GFP_ATOMIC allocations, which is bad.
>
> Requiring the spin_lock() caller to run set_current_gfp() would have
> the same effect.
>
>
>
> Or do we instead do this:
>
> - some_function(foo, bar, GFP_NOIO);
> + old_gfp = set_current_gfp(GFP_NOIO);
> + some_function(foo, bar);
> + set_current_gfp(old_gfp);
>
> So the rule is "if the code was using an explicit GFP_foo then convert
> it to use set_current_gfp(). If the code was receiving a gfp_t
> variable from the caller then delete that arg".
>
> Or something like that. It's all too hopelessly impractical to bother
> discussing - 20 years too late!
>
>
> otoh, maybe a constrained version of this could be used to address the
> vmalloc() problem alone.
>


Yes, I think it will be good start.

>
> otoh2, I didn't *want* blk-throttle.c to use GFP_NOIO for vmalloc().
> GFP_NOIO is weak, unreliable and lame. blk-throttle should find a way
> of using GFP_KERNEL!


I agree.
Thanks,
-Kame



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