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Michal Hocko 06ad276ac1 mm, oom: do not enforce OOM killer for __GFP_NOFAIL automatically
__alloc_pages_may_oom makes sure to skip the OOM killer depending on the
allocation request.  This includes lowmem requests, costly high order
requests and others.  For a long time __GFP_NOFAIL acted as an override
for all those rules.  This is not documented and it can be quite
surprising as well.  E.g.  GFP_NOFS requests are not invoking the OOM
killer but GFP_NOFS|__GFP_NOFAIL does so if we try to convert some of
the existing open coded loops around allocator to nofail request (and we
have done that in the past) then such a change would have a non trivial
side effect which is far from obvious.  Note that the primary motivation
for skipping the OOM killer is to prevent from pre-mature invocation.

The exception has been added by commit 82553a937f ("oom: invoke oom
killer for __GFP_NOFAIL").  The changelog points out that the oom killer
has to be invoked otherwise the request would be looping for ever.  But
this argument is rather weak because the OOM killer doesn't really
guarantee a forward progress for those exceptional cases:

- it will hardly help to form costly order which in turn can result in
  the system panic because of no oom killable task in the end - I believe
  we certainly do not want to put the system down just because there is a
  nasty driver asking for order-9 page with GFP_NOFAIL not realizing all
  the consequences.  It is much better this request would loop for ever
  than the massive system disruption

- lowmem is also highly unlikely to be freed during OOM killer

- GFP_NOFS request could trigger while there is still a lot of memory
  pinned by filesystems.

This patch simply removes the __GFP_NOFAIL special case in order to have a
more clear semantic without surprising side effects.

Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Reported-by: Nils Holland <nholland@tisys.org>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Hillf Danton <hillf.zj@alibaba-inc.com>
Cc: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2017-02-22 16:41:30 -08:00
arch lib/show_mem.c: teach show_mem to work with the given nodemask 2017-02-22 16:41:30 -08:00
block block: use for_each_thread() in sys_ioprio_set()/sys_ioprio_get() 2017-02-22 16:41:27 -08:00
certs certs: Add a secondary system keyring that can be added to dynamically 2016-04-11 22:48:09 +01:00
crypto crypto: algif_aead - Fix kernel panic on list_del 2017-02-03 17:45:48 +08:00
Documentation mm, thp: add new defer+madvise defrag option 2017-02-22 16:41:30 -08:00
drivers lib/show_mem.c: teach show_mem to work with the given nodemask 2017-02-22 16:41:30 -08:00
firmware WHENCE: use https://linuxtv.org for LinuxTV URLs 2015-12-04 10:35:11 -02:00
fs powerpc: do not make the entire heap executable 2017-02-22 16:41:29 -08:00
include lib/show_mem.c: teach show_mem to work with the given nodemask 2017-02-22 16:41:30 -08:00
init slub: make sysfs directories for memcg sub-caches optional 2017-02-22 16:41:27 -08:00
ipc ipc/sem.c: fix incorrect sem_lock pairing 2017-01-10 18:31:55 -08:00
kernel userfaultfd: non-cooperative: Add fork() event 2017-02-22 16:41:28 -08:00
lib lib/show_mem.c: teach show_mem to work with the given nodemask 2017-02-22 16:41:30 -08:00
mm mm, oom: do not enforce OOM killer for __GFP_NOFAIL automatically 2017-02-22 16:41:30 -08:00
net Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next 2017-02-22 10:15:09 -08:00
samples Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next 2017-02-22 10:15:09 -08:00
scripts scripts/tags.sh: include arch/Kconfig* for tags generation 2017-02-22 16:41:26 -08:00
security driver core patches for 4.11-rc1 2017-02-22 11:44:32 -08:00
sound ALSA: hda - adding a new NV HDMI/DP codec ID in the driver 2017-02-09 08:57:47 +01:00
tools userfaultfd: selftest: test UFFDIO_ZEROPAGE on all memory types 2017-02-22 16:41:29 -08:00
usr kbuild: initramfs cleanup, set target from Kconfig 2017-01-05 09:40:16 -08:00
virt KVM/ARM updates for 4.10-rc4 2017-01-17 15:04:59 +01:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore Add hch to .get_maintainer.ignore 2015-08-21 14:30:10 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore Merge branch 'misc' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mmarek/kbuild 2016-08-02 16:48:52 -04:00
.mailmap mailmap: add codeaurora.org names for nameless email commits 2017-01-10 18:31:55 -08:00
COPYING [PATCH] update FSF address in COPYING 2005-09-10 10:06:29 -07:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: Remove old e-mail address 2017-02-13 12:24:56 -05:00
Kbuild scripts/gdb: provide linux constants 2016-05-23 17:04:14 -07:00
Kconfig kbuild: migrate all arch to the kconfig mainmenu upgrade 2010-09-19 22:54:11 -04:00
MAINTAINERS dax: update MAINTAINERS entries for FS DAX 2017-02-22 16:41:26 -08:00
Makefile Merge branch 'perf-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-02-20 12:21:13 -08:00
README README: add a new README file, pointing to the Documentation/ 2016-10-24 08:12:35 -02:00

Linux kernel
============

This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst

Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users.
These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.