Commit b39d0ee2 ("mm, page_alloc: avoid expensive reclaim when
compaction may not succeed") has chnaged the allocator to bail out from
the allocator early to prevent from a potentially excessive memory
reclaim.  __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL is designed to retry the allocation,
reclaim and compaction loop as long as there is a reasonable chance to
make forward progress.  Neither COMPACT_SKIPPED nor COMPACT_DEFERRED at
the INIT_COMPACT_PRIORITY compaction attempt gives this feedback.

The most obvious affected subsystem is hugetlbfs which allocates huge
pages based on an admin request (or via admin configured overcommit).  I
have done a simple test which tries to allocate half of the memory for
hugetlb pages while the memory is full of a clean page cache.  This is
not an unusual situation because we try to cache as much of the memory
as possible and sysctl/sysfs interface to allocate huge pages is there
for flexibility to allocate hugetlb pages at any time.

System has 1GB of RAM and we are requesting 515MB worth of hugetlb pages
after the memory is prefilled by a clean page cache:

  root@test1:~# cat hugetlb_test.sh

  set -x
  echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
  echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
  echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/compact_memory
  dd if=/mnt/data/file-1G of=/dev/null bs=$((4<<10))
  TS=$(date +%s)
  echo 256 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
  cat /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages

The results for 2 consecutive runs on clean 5.3

  root@test1:~# sh hugetlb_test.sh
  + echo 0
  + echo 3
  + echo 1
  + dd if=/mnt/data/file-1G of=/dev/null bs=4096
  262144+0 records in
  262144+0 records out
  1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 21.0694 s, 51.0 MB/s
  + date +%s
  + TS=1569905284
  + echo 256
  + cat /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
  256
  root@test1:~# sh hugetlb_test.sh
  + echo 0
  + echo 3
  + echo 1
  + dd if=/mnt/data/file-1G of=/dev/null bs=4096
  262144+0 records in
  262144+0 records out
  1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 21.7548 s, 49.4 MB/s
  + date +%s
  + TS=1569905311
  + echo 256
  + cat /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
  256

Now with b39d0ee2 applied

  root@test1:~# sh hugetlb_test.sh
  + echo 0
  + echo 3
  + echo 1
  + dd if=/mnt/data/file-1G of=/dev/null bs=4096
  262144+0 records in
  262144+0 records out
  1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 20.1815 s, 53.2 MB/s
  + date +%s
  + TS=1569905516
  + echo 256
  + cat /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
  11
  root@test1:~# sh hugetlb_test.sh
  + echo 0
  + echo 3
  + echo 1
  + dd if=/mnt/data/file-1G of=/dev/null bs=4096
  262144+0 records in
  262144+0 records out
  1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 21.9485 s, 48.9 MB/s
  + date +%s
  + TS=1569905541
  + echo 256
  + cat /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
  12

The success rate went down by factor of 20!

Although hugetlb allocation requests might fail and it is reasonable to
expect them to under extremely fragmented memory or when the memory is
under a heavy pressure but the above situation is not that case.

Fix the regression by reverting back to the previous behavior for
__GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL requests and disable the beail out heuristic for
those requests.

Mike said:

: hugetlbfs allocations are commonly done via sysctl/sysfs shortly after
: boot where this may not be as much of an issue.  However, I am aware of at
: least three use cases where allocations are made after the system has been
: up and running for quite some time:
:
: - DB reconfiguration.  If sysctl/sysfs fails to get required number of
:   huge pages, system is rebooted to perform allocation after boot.
:
: - VM provisioning.  If unable get required number of huge pages, fall
:   back to base pages.
:
: - An application that does not preallocate pool, but rather allocates
:   pages at fault time for optimal NUMA locality.
:
: In all cases, I would expect b39d0ee2 to cause regressions and
: noticable behavior changes.
:
: My quick/limited testing in
: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/3468b605-a3a9-6978-9699-57c52a90bd7e@oracle.com
: was insufficient.  It was also mentioned that if something like
: b39d0ee2 went forward, I would like exemptions for __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL
: requests as in this patch.

[mhocko@suse.com: reworded changelog]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20191007075548.12456-1-mhocko@kernel.org
Fixes: b39d0ee2 ("mm, page_alloc: avoid expensive reclaim when compaction may not succeed")
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Reviewed-by: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>