Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 14 Apr 2016 12:56:28 -0700 (PDT) | From | David Rientjes <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 01/19] tree wide: get rid of __GFP_REPEAT for order-0 allocations part I |
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On Mon, 11 Apr 2016, Michal Hocko wrote:
> From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com> > > __GFP_REPEAT has a rather weak semantic but since it has been introduced > around 2.6.12 it has been ignored for low order allocations. Yet we have > the full kernel tree with its usage for apparently order-0 allocations. > This is really confusing because __GFP_REPEAT is explicitly documented > to allow allocation failures which is a weaker semantic than the current > order-0 has (basically nofail). > > Let's simply drop __GFP_REPEAT from those places. This would allow > to identify place which really need allocator to retry harder and > formulate a more specific semantic for what the flag is supposed to do > actually. > > Cc: linux-arch@vger.kernel.org > Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
I did exactly this before, and Andrew objected saying that __GFP_REPEAT may not be needed for the current page allocator's implementation but could with others and that setting __GFP_REPEAT for an allocation provided useful information with regards to intent. At the time, I attempted to eliminate __GFP_REPEAT entirely.
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