Re: [PATCH] mm: cma: honor __GFP_ZERO flag in cma_alloc()

From: Michal Hocko
Date: Mon Jul 02 2018 - 09:33:00 EST


On Mon 02-07-18 15:23:34, Marek Szyprowski wrote:
> Hi Michal,
>
> On 2018-06-13 15:39, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > On Wed 13-06-18 05:55:46, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> >> On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 02:40:00PM +0200, Marek Szyprowski wrote:
> >>> It is not only the matter of the spinlocks. GFP_ATOMIC is not supported
> >>> by the
> >>> memory compaction code, which is used in alloc_contig_range(). Right, this
> >>> should be also noted in the documentation.
> >> Documentation is good, asserts are better. The code should reject any
> >> flag not explicitly supported, or even better have its own flags type
> >> with the few actually supported flags.
> > Agreed. Is the cma allocator used for anything other than GFP_KERNEL
> > btw.? If not then, shouldn't we simply drop the gfp argument altogether
> > rather than give users a false hope for differen gfp modes that are not
> > really supported and grow broken code?
>
> Nope, all cma_alloc() callers are expected to use it with GFP_KERNEL gfp
> mask.
> The only flag which is now checked is __GFP_NOWARN. I can change the
> function
> signature of cma_alloc to:
> struct page *cma_alloc(struct cma *cma, size_t count, unsigned int
> align, bool no_warn);

Are there any __GFP_NOWARN users? I have quickly hit the indirection
trap and searching for alloc callback didn't tell me really much.

> What about clearing the allocated buffer? Should it be another bool
> parameter, done unconditionally or moved to the callers?

That really depends on callers. I have no idea what they actually ask
for.
--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs