Re: [PATCH 2/2] page allocator: Direct reclaim should always obeywatermarks

[David Rientjes]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009, Mel Gorman wrote:

> ALLOC_NO_WATERMARKS should be cleared when trying to allocate from the
> free-lists after a direct reclaim. If it's not, __GFP_NOFAIL allocations
> from a process that is exiting can ignore watermarks. __GFP_NOFAIL is not
> often used but the journal layer is one of those places. This is suspected of
> causing an increase in the number of GFP_ATOMIC allocation failures reported.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  mm/page_alloc.c |    3 ++-
>  1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index dfa4362..a3e5fed 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -1860,7 +1860,8 @@ rebalance:
>  	page = __alloc_pages_direct_reclaim(gfp_mask, order,
>  					zonelist, high_zoneidx,
>  					nodemask,
> -					alloc_flags, preferred_zone,
> +					alloc_flags & ~ALLOC_NO_WATERMARKS,
> +					preferred_zone,
>  					migratetype, &did_some_progress);
>  	if (page)
>  		goto got_pg;

I don't get it.  __alloc_pages_high_priority() will already loop 
indefinitely if ALLOC_NO_WATERMARKS is set and its a __GFP_NOFAIL 
allocation.  How do we even reach this code in such a condition?
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