Re: [RFC][PATCH] __alloc_pages_limit & order > 0

[Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>]

On Sat, 25 Aug 2001, Roger Larsson wrote:

> To begin with if order > 0 then direct_reclaim will be false even if
> it is allowed to wait...

That's because direct_reclaim can only reclaim 1 page from
the page cache at the same time, while a higher-order alloc
needs _multiple_ pages.

Thus, by definition, a direct-reclaim won't satisfy a higher
order allocation.

> This version allows direct_reclaim with order > 0 !

The old code already did this, albeit in a very ugly way.

I'd like to see the old code cleaned up, but I'm not too happy
about the main loop being complicated because of these (very rare)
higher-order allocations.

IIRC somebody measured his system one day and 99.5% of the allocs
were 0-order GFP_USER or GFP_KERNEL, so I guess we really want to
keep the multi-order allocs from messing with the main allocation
loop.

Then again, please do clean up the multi-order allocation page
cleaning loop, the way I coded it originally is just plain ugly ;)

regards,

Rik -- after a few drinks, so apply a grain of salt ;)
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