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From: "Uladzislau Rezki (Sony)" <urezki@gmail.com>
To: linux-mm@kvack.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>,
	Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>,
	Vishal Moola <vishal.moola@gmail.com>,
	Baoquan He <bhe@redhat.com>, LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Uladzislau Rezki <urezki@gmail.com>
Subject: [PATCH] vmalloc: support __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL and __GFP_NORETRY
Date: Mon,  2 Mar 2026 12:47:40 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260302114740.2668450-2-urezki@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260302114740.2668450-1-urezki@gmail.com>

From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>

__GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL and __GFP_NORETRY haven't been supported so far
because their semantic (i.e. to not trigger OOM killer) is not possible
with the existing vmalloc page table allocation which is allowing for
the OOM killer.

Example: __vmalloc(size, GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL);

<snip>
 vmalloc_test/55 invoked oom-killer:
 gfp_mask=0x40dc0(
 GFP_KERNEL|__GFP_ZERO|__GFP_COMP), order=0, oom_score_adj=0
 active_anon:0 inactive_anon:0 isolated_anon:0
  active_file:0 inactive_file:0 isolated_file:0
  unevictable:0 dirty:0 writeback:0
  slab_reclaimable:700 slab_unreclaimable:33708
  mapped:0 shmem:0 pagetables:5174
  sec_pagetables:0 bounce:0
  kernel_misc_reclaimable:0
  free:850 free_pcp:319 free_cma:0
 CPU: 4 UID: 0 PID: 639 Comm: vmalloc_test/55 ...
 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, ...
 Call Trace:
  <TASK>
  dump_stack_lvl+0x5d/0x80
  dump_header+0x43/0x1b3
  out_of_memory.cold+0x8/0x78
  __alloc_pages_slowpath.constprop.0+0xef5/0x1130
  __alloc_frozen_pages_noprof+0x312/0x330
  alloc_pages_mpol+0x7d/0x160
  alloc_pages_noprof+0x50/0xa0
  __pte_alloc_kernel+0x1e/0x1f0
  ...
<snip>

There are usecases for these modifiers when a large allocation request
should rather fail than trigger OOM killer which wouldn't be able to
handle the situation anyway [1].

While we cannot change existing page table allocation code easily we can
piggy back on scoped NOWAIT allocation for them that we already have in
place. The rationale is that the bulk of the consumed memory is sitting
in pages backing the vmalloc allocation. Page tables are only
participating a tiny fraction. Moreover page tables for virtually allocated
areas are never reclaimed so the longer the system runs to less likely
they are. It makes sense to allow an approximation of __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL
and __GFP_NORETRY even if the page table allocation part is much weaker.
This doesn't break the failure mode while it allows for the no OOM
semantic.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/32bd9bed-a939-69c4-696d-f7f9a5fe31d8@redhat.com/T/#u

Tested-by: Uladzislau Rezki (Sony) <urezki@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Uladzislau Rezki (Sony) <urezki@gmail.com>
---
 mm/vmalloc.c | 17 ++++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/vmalloc.c b/mm/vmalloc.c
index a06f4b3ea367..975592b0ec89 100644
--- a/mm/vmalloc.c
+++ b/mm/vmalloc.c
@@ -3798,6 +3798,8 @@ static void defer_vm_area_cleanup(struct vm_struct *area)
  * non-blocking (no __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM) - memalloc_noreclaim_save()
  * GFP_NOFS - memalloc_nofs_save()
  * GFP_NOIO - memalloc_noio_save()
+ * __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL, __GFP_NORETRY - memalloc_noreclaim_save()
+ * to prevent OOMs
  *
  * Returns a flag cookie to pair with restore.
  */
@@ -3806,7 +3808,8 @@ memalloc_apply_gfp_scope(gfp_t gfp_mask)
 {
 	unsigned int flags = 0;
 
-	if (!gfpflags_allow_blocking(gfp_mask))
+	if (!gfpflags_allow_blocking(gfp_mask) ||
+			(gfp_mask & (__GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL | __GFP_NORETRY)))
 		flags = memalloc_noreclaim_save();
 	else if ((gfp_mask & (__GFP_FS | __GFP_IO)) == __GFP_IO)
 		flags = memalloc_nofs_save();
@@ -3940,7 +3943,8 @@ static void *__vmalloc_area_node(struct vm_struct *area, gfp_t gfp_mask,
  * GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT. Xfs uses __GFP_NOLOCKDEP.
  */
 #define GFP_VMALLOC_SUPPORTED (GFP_KERNEL | GFP_ATOMIC | GFP_NOWAIT |\
-				__GFP_NOFAIL |  __GFP_ZERO | __GFP_NORETRY |\
+				__GFP_NOFAIL | __GFP_ZERO |\
+				__GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL |\
 				GFP_NOFS | GFP_NOIO | GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT |\
 				GFP_USER | __GFP_NOLOCKDEP)
 
@@ -3971,12 +3975,15 @@ static gfp_t vmalloc_fix_flags(gfp_t flags)
  * virtual range with protection @prot.
  *
  * Supported GFP classes: %GFP_KERNEL, %GFP_ATOMIC, %GFP_NOWAIT,
- * %GFP_NOFS and %GFP_NOIO. Zone modifiers are not supported.
+ * %__GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL, %__GFP_NORETRY, %GFP_NOFS and %GFP_NOIO.
+ * Zone modifiers are not supported.
  * Please note %GFP_ATOMIC and %GFP_NOWAIT are supported only
  * by __vmalloc().
  *
- * Retry modifiers: only %__GFP_NOFAIL is supported; %__GFP_NORETRY
- * and %__GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL are not supported.
+ * Retry modifiers: only %__GFP_NOFAIL is fully supported;
+ * %__GFP_NORETRY and %__GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL are supported with limitation,
+ * i.e. page tables are allocated with NOWAIT semantic so they might fail
+ * under moderate memory pressure.
  *
  * %__GFP_NOWARN can be used to suppress failure messages.
  *
-- 
2.47.3



  reply	other threads:[~2026-03-02 11:47 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-03-02 11:47 [PATCH] mm/vmalloc: Fix incorrect size reporting on allocation failure Uladzislau Rezki (Sony)
2026-03-02 11:47 ` Uladzislau Rezki (Sony) [this message]
2026-03-02 14:52 ` Dev Jain

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