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Henry Willard 14f69140ff mm: limit boost_watermark on small zones
Commit 1c30844d2d ("mm: reclaim small amounts of memory when an
external fragmentation event occurs") adds a boost_watermark() function
which increases the min watermark in a zone by at least
pageblock_nr_pages or the number of pages in a page block.

On Arm64, with 64K pages and 512M huge pages, this is 8192 pages or
512M.  It does this regardless of the number of managed pages managed in
the zone or the likelihood of success.

This can put the zone immediately under water in terms of allocating
pages from the zone, and can cause a small machine to fail immediately
due to OoM.  Unlike set_recommended_min_free_kbytes(), which
substantially increases min_free_kbytes and is tied to THP,
boost_watermark() can be called even if THP is not active.

The problem is most likely to appear on architectures such as Arm64
where pageblock_nr_pages is very large.

It is desirable to run the kdump capture kernel in as small a space as
possible to avoid wasting memory.  In some architectures, such as Arm64,
there are restrictions on where the capture kernel can run, and
therefore, the space available.  A capture kernel running in 768M can
fail due to OoM immediately after boost_watermark() sets the min in zone
DMA32, where most of the memory is, to 512M.  It fails even though there
is over 500M of free memory.  With boost_watermark() suppressed, the
capture kernel can run successfully in 448M.

This patch limits boost_watermark() to boosting a zone's min watermark
only when there are enough pages that the boost will produce positive
results.  In this case that is estimated to be four times as many pages
as pageblock_nr_pages.

Mel said:

: There is no harm in marking it stable.  Clearly it does not happen very
: often but it's not impossible.  32-bit x86 is a lot less common now
: which would previously have been vulnerable to triggering this easily.
: ppc64 has a larger base page size but typically only has one zone.
: arm64 is likely the most vulnerable, particularly when CMA is
: configured with a small movable zone.

Fixes: 1c30844d2d ("mm: reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs")
Signed-off-by: Henry Willard <henry.willard@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Reviewed-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1588294148-6586-1-git-send-email-henry.willard@oracle.com
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2020-05-07 19:27:21 -07:00
arch arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c: change flag passed to GUP fast in sev_pin_memory() 2020-05-07 19:27:20 -07:00
block block: remove the bd_openers checks in blk_drop_partitions 2020-04-30 10:25:43 -06:00
certs .gitignore: add SPDX License Identifier 2020-03-25 11:50:48 +01:00
crypto Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2020-04-01 14:47:40 -07:00
Documentation Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2020-05-06 20:53:22 -07:00
drivers Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2020-05-06 20:53:22 -07:00
fs epoll: atomically remove wait entry on wake up 2020-05-07 19:27:21 -07:00
include Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2020-05-06 20:53:22 -07:00
init Kbuild updates for v5.7 (2nd) 2020-04-11 09:46:12 -07:00
ipc ipc/mqueue.c: change __do_notify() to bypass check_kill_permission() 2020-05-07 19:27:20 -07:00
kernel kernel/kcov.c: fix typos in kcov_remote_start documentation 2020-05-07 19:27:20 -07:00
lib ubsan: disable UBSAN_ALIGNMENT under COMPILE_TEST 2020-05-07 19:27:21 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Rename other to deprecated 2019-05-03 06:34:32 -06:00
mm mm: limit boost_watermark on small zones 2020-05-07 19:27:21 -07:00
net Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2020-05-06 20:53:22 -07:00
samples vmalloc: fix remap_vmalloc_range() bounds checks 2020-04-21 11:11:56 -07:00
scripts scripts/gdb: repair rb_first() and rb_last() 2020-05-07 19:27:20 -07:00
security selinux/stable-5.7 PR 20200430 2020-04-30 16:35:45 -07:00
sound sound fixes for 5.7-rc4 2020-05-01 11:05:28 -07:00
tools ubsan: disable UBSAN_ALIGNMENT under COMPILE_TEST 2020-05-07 19:27:21 -07:00
usr kbuild: fix comment about missing include guard detection 2020-04-11 12:09:48 +09:00
virt KVM: Pass kvm_init()'s opaque param to additional arch funcs 2020-03-31 10:48:03 -04:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with the latest for_each macro list 2020-04-18 13:49:33 +02:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for dts files 2019-12-04 19:44:11 -08:00
.gitignore .gitignore: add SPDX License Identifier 2020-03-25 11:50:48 +01:00
.mailmap mailmap: Add Sedat Dilek (replacement for expired email address) 2020-04-11 09:28:34 -07:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: Hand MIPS over to Thomas 2020-02-24 22:43:18 -08:00
Kbuild kbuild: rename hostprogs-y/always to hostprogs/always-y 2020-02-04 01:53:07 +09:00
Kconfig docs: kbuild: convert docs to ReST and rename to *.rst 2019-06-14 14:21:21 -06:00
MAINTAINERS Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2020-05-06 20:53:22 -07:00
Makefile Linux 5.7-rc4 2020-05-03 14:56:04 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.