[dm-devel] [patch] mm: improve __GFP_NORETRY comment based on implementation

David Rientjes rientjes at google.com
Tue Jul 14 21:28:21 UTC 2015


Explicitly state that __GFP_NORETRY will attempt direct reclaim and memory 
compaction before returning NULL and that the oom killer is not called in 
the current implementation of the page allocator.

Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes at google.com>
---
 include/linux/gfp.h | 5 ++++-
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/gfp.h b/include/linux/gfp.h
--- a/include/linux/gfp.h
+++ b/include/linux/gfp.h
@@ -63,7 +63,10 @@ struct vm_area_struct;
  * but it is definitely preferable to use the flag rather than opencode endless
  * loop around allocator.
  *
- * __GFP_NORETRY: The VM implementation must not retry indefinitely.
+ * __GFP_NORETRY: The VM implementation must not retry indefinitely and will
+ * return NULL when direct reclaim and memory compaction has failed to allow the
+ * allocation to succeed.  The OOM killer is not called with the current
+ * implementation.
  *
  * __GFP_MOVABLE: Flag that this page will be movable by the page migration
  * mechanism or reclaimed




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