On Tue 24-02-26 06:22:15, Shakeel Butt wrote: > On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 06:03:13AM -0800, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 01:22:36PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote: > > > One thing that we could do to improve __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL resp. > > > __GFP_NORETRY is to use NOWAIT allocation semantic for page table > > > allocations as those could be achieved by scoped allocation context. > > > This could cause pre-mature failure after the whole bunch of memory has > > > already been allocated for the backing pages but considering that page > > > table allocations should be more and more rare over system runtime it > > > might be just a reasonable workaround. WDYT? > > > > Why bother? __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL has pretty lose semantics. Trying > > too hard to allocate PTEs is not breaking the overall concept. > > > > One thing __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL is very clear about is to not trigger the > oom-killer which is not the case for GFP_KERNEL. There are users who > explicitly > use __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL to avoid oom-killer. > > Mikulas, is that the reason you are using __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL in your > use-case?
yes https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/T/#u -- Michal Hocko SUSE Labs
