mm: introduce memalloc_retry_wait()

Various places in the kernel - largely in filesystems - respond to a
memory allocation failure by looping around and re-trying.  Some of
these cannot conveniently use __GFP_NOFAIL, for reasons such as:

 - a GFP_ATOMIC allocation, which __GFP_NOFAIL doesn't work on
 - a need to check for the process being signalled between failures
 - the possibility that other recovery actions could be performed
 - the allocation is quite deep in support code, and passing down an
   extra flag to say if __GFP_NOFAIL is wanted would be clumsy.

Many of these currently use congestion_wait() which (in almost all
cases) simply waits the given timeout - congestion isn't tracked for
most devices.

It isn't clear what the best delay is for loops, but it is clear that
the various filesystems shouldn't be responsible for choosing a timeout.

This patch introduces memalloc_retry_wait() with takes on that
responsibility.  Code that wants to retry a memory allocation can call
this function passing the GFP flags that were used.  It will wait
however is appropriate.

For now, it only considers __GFP_NORETRY and whatever
gfpflags_allow_blocking() tests.  If blocking is allowed without
__GFP_NORETRY, then alloc_page either made some reclaim progress, or
waited for a while, before failing.  So there is no need for much
further waiting.  memalloc_retry_wait() will wait until the current
jiffie ends.  If this condition is not met, then alloc_page() won't have
waited much if at all.  In that case memalloc_retry_wait() waits about
200ms.  This is the delay that most current loops uses.

linux/sched/mm.h needs to be included in some files now,
but linux/backing-dev.h does not.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/163754371968.13692.1277530886009912421@noble.neil.brown.name
Signed-off-by: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: Jaegeuk Kim <jaegeuk@kernel.org>
Cc: Chao Yu <chao@kernel.org>
Cc: Darrick J. Wong <djwong@kernel.org>
Cc: Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 26 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/sched/mm.h b/include/linux/sched/mm.h
index aca874d33fe6..aa5f09ca5bcf 100644
--- a/include/linux/sched/mm.h
+++ b/include/linux/sched/mm.h
@@ -214,6 +214,32 @@ static inline void fs_reclaim_acquire(gfp_t gfp_mask) { }
 static inline void fs_reclaim_release(gfp_t gfp_mask) { }
 #endif
 
+/* Any memory-allocation retry loop should use
+ * memalloc_retry_wait(), and pass the flags for the most
+ * constrained allocation attempt that might have failed.
+ * This provides useful documentation of where loops are,
+ * and a central place to fine tune the waiting as the MM
+ * implementation changes.
+ */
+static inline void memalloc_retry_wait(gfp_t gfp_flags)
+{
+	/* We use io_schedule_timeout because waiting for memory
+	 * typically included waiting for dirty pages to be
+	 * written out, which requires IO.
+	 */
+	__set_current_state(TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
+	gfp_flags = current_gfp_context(gfp_flags);
+	if (gfpflags_allow_blocking(gfp_flags) &&
+	    !(gfp_flags & __GFP_NORETRY))
+		/* Probably waited already, no need for much more */
+		io_schedule_timeout(1);
+	else
+		/* Probably didn't wait, and has now released a lock,
+		 * so now is a good time to wait
+		 */
+		io_schedule_timeout(HZ/50);
+}
+
 /**
  * might_alloc - Mark possible allocation sites
  * @gfp_mask: gfp_t flags that would be used to allocate