linux-kernel - Re: Re : .... get_page_from_freelist : MInority Suggestion to accept GFP

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Date:	Fri, 3 Jul 2009 02:01:00 -0700 (PDT)
From:	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>
To:	Mitchell Erblich <erblichs@...thlink.net>
cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Re : .... get_page_from_freelist : MInority Suggestion to accept
 GFP_NOFAIL accept during boot

On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Mitchell Erblich wrote:

> Group,
> 
> 
> 	If I may suggest a minority opinion about the depreciating of the
> GFP_NOFAIL flag..
> 
> 	I saw no discussion on the acceptance of using this flag during boot
> and shortly
> 	after boot.
> 
> 	Many kernel structures require memory and thus should guarantee memory
> 	before they continue.
> 	
> 	As Linux is moved within embedded environments with smaller amounts of
> 	physical memory, the chance that earlier mem failures becomes higher.
> 
> 	For this logic alone, my minority opinion is to not depreciate the
> GFP_NOFAIL flag.
> 

I'm confused by your request because all allocations with orders under 
PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER are inherently __GFP_NOFAIL and those that are not 
can easily implement the same behavior in the caller:

	struct page *page;
	do {
		page = alloc_pages(...);
	} while (!page);

Hopefully something could be done to ensure the next call to alloc_pages() 
would be more likely to succeed, but __GFP_NOFAIL doesn't provide that 
anyway.
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