From: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] mm: slub: Default slub_max_order to 0
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 10:49:58 +0100
Message-ID: <20110513094958.GA3569@suse.de>
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Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>,
	Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>,
	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com>,
	Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Colin King <colin.king@canonical.com>,
	Raghavendra D Prabhu <raghu.prabhu13@gmail.com>,
	Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>, Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>,
	Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-mm <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-ext4 <linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org>
To: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
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On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 08:00:18PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> <SNIP>
>
> BTW, it comes to mind in patch 2, SLUB should clear __GFP_REPEAT too
> (not only __GFP_NOFAIL). Clearing __GFP_WAIT may be worth it or not
> with COMPACTION=y, definitely good idea to clear __GFP_WAIT unless
> lumpy is restricted to __GFP_REPEAT|__GFP_NOFAIL.

This is in V2 (unreleased, testing in progress and was running
overnight). I noticed that clearing __GFP_REPEAT is required for
reclaim/compaction if direct reclaimers from SLUB are to return false in
should_continue_reclaim() and bail out from high-order allocation
properly. As it is, there is a possibility for slub high-order direct
reclaimers to loop in reclaim/compaction for a long time. This is
only important when CONFIG_COMPACTION=y.

-- 
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs