linux-kernel - Re: [patch] mm, compaction: abort free scanner if split fails

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Message-Id: <20160622145617.79197acff1a7e617b9d9d393@linux-foundation.org>
Date:	Wed, 22 Jun 2016 14:56:17 -0700
From:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>
Cc:	Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>, Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>,
	Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@....com>,
	Mel Gorman <mgorman@...hsingularity.net>,
	Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, stable@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [patch] mm, compaction: abort free scanner if split fails

On Tue, 21 Jun 2016 18:22:49 -0700 (PDT) David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com> wrote:

> If the memory compaction free scanner cannot successfully split a free
> page (only possible due to per-zone low watermark), terminate the free 
> scanner rather than continuing to scan memory needlessly.  If the 
> watermark is insufficient for a free page of order <= cc->order, then 
> terminate the scanner since all future splits will also likely fail.
> 
> This prevents the compaction freeing scanner from scanning all memory on 
> very large zones (very noticeable for zones > 128GB, for instance) when 
> all splits will likely fail while holding zone->lock.
> 

This collides pretty heavily with Joonsoo's "mm/compaction: split
freepages without holding the zone lock".

I ended up with this, in isolate_freepages_block():

		/* Found a free page, will break it into order-0 pages */
		order = page_order(page);
		isolated = __isolate_free_page(page, page_order(page));
		set_page_private(page, order);

		total_isolated += isolated;
		cc->nr_freepages += isolated;
		list_add_tail(&page->lru, freelist);

		if (!strict && cc->nr_migratepages <= cc->nr_freepages) {
			blockpfn += isolated;
			break;
		}
		/* Advance to the end of split page */
		blockpfn += isolated - 1;
		cursor += isolated - 1;
		continue;

isolate_fail: