[RFC v1 1/2] mm/page_alloc: Prevent OOM killer from triggering if requested

[Joel Fernandes]

Certain allocation paths such as the ftrace ring buffer allocator
want to try hard to allocate but not trigger OOM killer and de-stabilize
the system. Currently the ring buffer uses __GFP_NO_RETRY to prevent
the OOM killer from triggering situation however this has an issue.
Its possible the system is in a state where:
a) retrying can make the allocation succeed.
b) there's plenty of memory available in the page cache to satisfy
   the request and just retrying is needed. Even though direct reclaim
   makes progress, it still couldn't find free page from the free list.

This patch adds a new GFP flag (__GFP_DONTOOM) to handle the situation
where we want the retry behavior but still want to bail out before going
to OOM killer if retries couldn't satisfy the allocation.

Cc: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Hao Lee <haolee.swjtu@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov.dev@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: linux-mm@xxxxxxxxx
Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes <joelaf@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
 include/linux/gfp.h | 6 +++++-
 mm/page_alloc.c     | 7 +++++++
 2 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/gfp.h b/include/linux/gfp.h
index 4c6656f1fee7..beaabd110008 100644
--- a/include/linux/gfp.h
+++ b/include/linux/gfp.h
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ struct vm_area_struct;
 #define ___GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM	0x400000u
 #define ___GFP_WRITE		0x800000u
 #define ___GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM	0x1000000u
+#define ___GFP_DONTOOM		0x2000000u
 #ifdef CONFIG_LOCKDEP
 #define ___GFP_NOLOCKDEP	0x2000000u
 #else
@@ -149,6 +150,8 @@ struct vm_area_struct;
  *   return NULL when direct reclaim and memory compaction have failed to allow
  *   the allocation to succeed.  The OOM killer is not called with the current
  *   implementation.
+ *
+ * __GFP_DONTOOM: The VM implementation must not OOM if retries have exhausted.
  */
 #define __GFP_IO	((__force gfp_t)___GFP_IO)
 #define __GFP_FS	((__force gfp_t)___GFP_FS)
@@ -158,6 +161,7 @@ struct vm_area_struct;
 #define __GFP_REPEAT	((__force gfp_t)___GFP_REPEAT)
 #define __GFP_NOFAIL	((__force gfp_t)___GFP_NOFAIL)
 #define __GFP_NORETRY	((__force gfp_t)___GFP_NORETRY)
+#define __GFP_DONTOOM	((__force gfp_t)___GFP_DONTOOM)
 
 /*
  * Action modifiers
@@ -188,7 +192,7 @@ struct vm_area_struct;
 #define __GFP_NOLOCKDEP ((__force gfp_t)___GFP_NOLOCKDEP)
 
 /* Room for N __GFP_FOO bits */
-#define __GFP_BITS_SHIFT (25 + IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_LOCKDEP))
+#define __GFP_BITS_SHIFT (26 + IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_LOCKDEP))
 #define __GFP_BITS_MASK ((__force gfp_t)((1 << __GFP_BITS_SHIFT) - 1))
 
 /*
diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index bd65b60939b6..970a5c380bb6 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -3908,6 +3908,13 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
 	if (check_retry_cpuset(cpuset_mems_cookie, ac))
 		goto retry_cpuset;
 
+	/*
+	 * Its possible that retries failed but we still don't want OOM
+	 * killer to trigger and can just try again later.
+	 */
+	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_DONTOOM)
+		goto nopage;
+
 	/* Reclaim has failed us, start killing things */
 	page = __alloc_pages_may_oom(gfp_mask, order, ac, &did_some_progress);
 	if (page)
-- 
2.13.2.725.g09c95d1e9-goog