page allocator: explicitly retry hugepage allocations
Add __GFP_REPEAT to hugepage allocations. Do so to not necessitate userspace putting pressure on the VM by repeated echo's into /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages to grow the pool. With the previous patch to allow for large-order __GFP_REPEAT attempts to loop for a bit (as opposed to indefinitely), this increases the likelihood of getting hugepages when the system experiences (or recently experienced) load. Mel tested the patchset on an x86_32 laptop. With the patches, it was easier to use the proc interface to grow the hugepage pool. The following is the output of a script that grows the pool as much as possible running on 2.6.25-rc9. Allocating hugepages test ------------------------- Disabling OOM Killer for current test process Starting page count: 0 Attempt 1: 57 pages Progress made with 57 pages Attempt 2: 73 pages Progress made with 16 pages Attempt 3: 74 pages Progress made with 1 pages Attempt 4: 75 pages Progress made with 1 pages Attempt 5: 77 pages Progress made with 2 pages 77 pages was the most it allocated but it took 5 attempts from userspace to get it. With the 3 patches in this series applied, Allocating hugepages test ------------------------- Disabling OOM Killer for current test process Starting page count: 0 Attempt 1: 75 pages Progress made with 75 pages Attempt 2: 76 pages Progress made with 1 pages Attempt 3: 79 pages Progress made with 3 pages And 79 pages was the most it got. Your patches were able to allocate the bulk of possible pages on the first attempt. Signed-off-by: Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com> Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Tested-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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