Revision 0ee931c4e31a5efb134c76440405e9219f896e33 authored by Michal Hocko on 13 September 2017, 23:28:29 UTC, committed by Linus Torvalds on 14 September 2017, 01:53:16 UTC
GFP_TEMPORARY was introduced by commit e12ba74d8ff3 ("Group short-lived
and reclaimable kernel allocations") along with __GFP_RECLAIMABLE. It's
primary motivation was to allow users to tell that an allocation is
short lived and so the allocator can try to place such allocations close
together and prevent long term fragmentation. As much as this sounds
like a reasonable semantic it becomes much less clear when to use the
highlevel GFP_TEMPORARY allocation flag. How long is temporary? Can the
context holding that memory sleep? Can it take locks? It seems there is
no good answer for those questions.
The current implementation of GFP_TEMPORARY is basically GFP_KERNEL |
__GFP_RECLAIMABLE which in itself is tricky because basically none of
the existing caller provide a way to reclaim the allocated memory. So
this is rather misleading and hard to evaluate for any benefits.
I have checked some random users and none of them has added the flag
with a specific justification. I suspect most of them just copied from
other existing users and others just thought it might be a good idea to
use without any measuring. This suggests that GFP_TEMPORARY just
motivates for cargo cult usage without any reasoning.
I believe that our gfp flags are quite complex already and especially
those with highlevel semantic should be clearly defined to prevent from
confusion and abuse. Therefore I propose dropping GFP_TEMPORARY and
replace all existing users to simply use GFP_KERNEL. Please note that
SLAB users with shrinkers will still get __GFP_RECLAIMABLE heuristic and
so they will be placed properly for memory fragmentation prevention.
I can see reasons we might want some gfp flag to reflect shorterm
allocations but I propose starting from a clear semantic definition and
only then add users with proper justification.
This was been brought up before LSF this year by Matthew [1] and it
turned out that GFP_TEMPORARY really doesn't have a clear semantic. It
seems to be a heuristic without any measured advantage for most (if not
all) its current users. The follow up discussion has revealed that
opinions on what might be temporary allocation differ a lot between
developers. So rather than trying to tweak existing users into a
semantic which they haven't expected I propose to simply remove the flag
and start from scratch if we really need a semantic for short term
allocations.
[1] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170118054945.GD18349@bombadil.infradead.org
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix typo]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
[sfr@canb.auug.org.au: drm/i915: fix up]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170816144703.378d4f4d@canb.auug.org.au
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170728091904.14627-1-mhocko@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>
Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
1 parent d0dbf77
adjust_autoksyms.sh
#!/bin/sh
# Script to create/update include/generated/autoksyms.h and dependency files
#
# Copyright: (C) 2016 Linaro Limited
# Created by: Nicolas Pitre, January 2016
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
# published by the Free Software Foundation.
# Create/update the include/generated/autoksyms.h file from the list
# of all module's needed symbols as recorded on the third line of
# .tmp_versions/*.mod files.
#
# For each symbol being added or removed, the corresponding dependency
# file's timestamp is updated to force a rebuild of the affected source
# file. All arguments passed to this script are assumed to be a command
# to be exec'd to trigger a rebuild of those files.
set -e
cur_ksyms_file="include/generated/autoksyms.h"
new_ksyms_file="include/generated/autoksyms.h.tmpnew"
info() {
if [ "$quiet" != "silent_" ]; then
printf " %-7s %s\n" "$1" "$2"
fi
}
info "CHK" "$cur_ksyms_file"
# Use "make V=1" to debug this script.
case "$KBUILD_VERBOSE" in
*1*)
set -x
;;
esac
# We need access to CONFIG_ symbols
case "${KCONFIG_CONFIG}" in
*/*)
. "${KCONFIG_CONFIG}"
;;
*)
# Force using a file from the current directory
. "./${KCONFIG_CONFIG}"
esac
# In case it doesn't exist yet...
if [ -e "$cur_ksyms_file" ]; then touch "$cur_ksyms_file"; fi
# Generate a new ksym list file with symbols needed by the current
# set of modules.
cat > "$new_ksyms_file" << EOT
/*
* Automatically generated file; DO NOT EDIT.
*/
EOT
[ "$(ls -A "$MODVERDIR")" ] &&
sed -ns -e '3{s/ /\n/g;/^$/!p;}' "$MODVERDIR"/*.mod | sort -u |
while read sym; do
if [ -n "$CONFIG_HAVE_UNDERSCORE_SYMBOL_PREFIX" ]; then
sym="${sym#_}"
fi
echo "#define __KSYM_${sym} 1"
done >> "$new_ksyms_file"
# Special case for modversions (see modpost.c)
if [ -n "$CONFIG_MODVERSIONS" ]; then
echo "#define __KSYM_module_layout 1" >> "$new_ksyms_file"
fi
# Extract changes between old and new list and touch corresponding
# dependency files.
changed=$(
count=0
sort "$cur_ksyms_file" "$new_ksyms_file" | uniq -u |
sed -n 's/^#define __KSYM_\(.*\) 1/\1/p' | tr "A-Z_" "a-z/" |
while read sympath; do
if [ -z "$sympath" ]; then continue; fi
depfile="include/config/ksym/${sympath}.h"
mkdir -p "$(dirname "$depfile")"
touch "$depfile"
echo $((count += 1))
done | tail -1 )
changed=${changed:-0}
if [ $changed -gt 0 ]; then
# Replace the old list with tne new one
old=$(grep -c "^#define __KSYM_" "$cur_ksyms_file" || true)
new=$(grep -c "^#define __KSYM_" "$new_ksyms_file" || true)
info "KSYMS" "symbols: before=$old, after=$new, changed=$changed"
info "UPD" "$cur_ksyms_file"
mv -f "$new_ksyms_file" "$cur_ksyms_file"
# Then trigger a rebuild of affected source files
exec $@
else
rm -f "$new_ksyms_file"
fi
Computing file changes ...
