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Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2018 09:53:53 -0500 (CDT)
From: Christopher Lameter <cl@linux.com>
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To: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>,
        Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>,
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        Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] SLUB: Do not fallback to mininum order if __GFP_NORETRY
 is set
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On Thu, 19 Apr 2018, Michal Hocko wrote:

> Overriding __GFP_NORETRY is just a bad idea. It will make the semantic
> of the flag just more confusing. Note there are users who use
> __GFP_NORETRY as a way to suppress heavy memory pressure and/or the OOM
> killer. You do not want to change the semantic for them.

Redoing the allocation after failing a large order alloc is a retry. I
would say its confusing right now because a retry occurs despite
specifying GFP_NORETRY,

> Besides that the changelog is less than optimal. What is the actual
> problem? Why somebody doesn't want a fallback? Is there a configuration
> that could prevent the same?

The problem is that SLUB does not honor GFP_NORETRY. The semantics of
GFP_NORETRY are not followed.