From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail-wg0-f47.google.com (mail-wg0-f47.google.com [74.125.82.47]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 869468296B for ; Wed, 11 Mar 2015 16:55:14 -0400 (EDT) Received: by wghl2 with SMTP id l2so12011867wgh.8 for ; Wed, 11 Mar 2015 13:55:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mx2.suse.de (cantor2.suse.de. [195.135.220.15]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id dm7si22158904wid.26.2015.03.11.13.55.12 for (version=TLSv1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Wed, 11 Mar 2015 13:55:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Michal Hocko Subject: [PATCH 0/2] Move away from non-failing small allocations Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 16:54:52 -0400 Message-Id: <1426107294-21551-1-git-send-email-mhocko@suse.cz> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: To: Andrew Morton Cc: Johannes Weiner , Dave Chinner , Mel Gorman , Rik van Riel , Wu Fengguang , linux-mm@kvack.org, LKML , Linux API Hi, as per discussion at LSF/MM summit few days back it seems there is a general agreement on moving away from "small allocations do not fail" concept. There are two patches in this series. The first one exports a sysctl knob which controls how hard small allocation (!__GFP_NOFAIL ones of course) retry when we get completely out of memory before the allocation fails. The default is still retry infinitely because we cannot simply change the 14+ years behavior right away. It will take years before all the potential fallouts are discovered and fixed and we can change the default value. The second patch is the first step in the transition plan. It changes the default but it is NOT an upstream material. It is aimed for brave testers who can cope with failures. I have talked to Andrew and he was willing to keep that patch in mmotm tree. It would be even better to have this in linux-next because the testing coverage would be even bigger. Dave Chinner has also shown an interest to integrate this into his xfstest farm. It would be great if Fenguang could add it into the zero testing project too (if the pushing the patch into linux-next would be too controversial). -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org