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authorMathieu <sigsys@gmail.com>2024-11-14 00:24:02 +0000
committerOlivier Certner <olce@FreeBSD.org>2025-03-25 08:41:44 +0000
commit718d1928f8748fe4429c011296f94f194d63c695 (patch)
treef7951b7a0a022aab83f0b8f7d60d5b500edc7925 /share/doc/smm/07.lpd/7.t
parentb6708045590712930c533e916e3d6fdfe48ec5ba (diff)
LinuxKPI: make linux_alloc_pages() honor __GFP_NORETRYHEADmain
This is to fix slowdowns with drm-kmod that get worse over time as physical memory become more fragmented (and probably also depending on other factors). Based on information posted in this bug report: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=277476 By default, linux_alloc_pages() retries failed allocations by calling vm_page_reclaim_contig() to attempt to free contiguous physical memory pages. vm_page_reclaim_contig() does not always succeed and calling it can be very slow even when it fails. When physical memory is very fragmented, vm_page_reclaim_contig() can end up being called (and failing) after every allocation attempt. This could cause very noticeable graphical desktop hangs (which could last seconds). The drm-kmod code in question attempts to allocate multiple contiguous pages at once but does not actually require them to be contiguous. It can fallback to doing multiple smaller allocations when larger allocations fail. It passes alloc_pages() the __GFP_NORETRY flag in this case. This patch makes linux_alloc_pages() fail early (without retrying) when this flag is passed. [olce: The problem this patch fixes is longer and longer GUI freezes as a machine's memory gets filled and becomes fragmented, when using amdgpu from DRM kmod 5.15 and DRM kmod 6.1 (DRM kmod 5.10 is unaffected; newer Linux kernel introduced an "optimization" by which a pool of pages is filled preferentially with contiguous pages, which triggered the problem for us). The original commit message above evokes freezes lasting seconds, but I occasionally witnessed some lasting tens of minutes, rendering a machine completely useless. The patch has been reviewed for its potential impacts to other LinuxKPI parts and our existing DRM kmods' code. In particular, there is no other user of __GFP_NORETRY/GFP_NORETRY with Linux's alloc_pages*() functions in our tree or DRM kmod ports. It has also been tested extensively, by me for months against 14-STABLE and sporadically on -CURRENT on a RX580, and by several others as reported below and as is visible in more details in the quoted bugzilla PR and in the initial drm-kmod issue at https://github.com/freebsd/drm-kmod/issues/302, on a variety of other AMD GPUs (several RX580, RX570, Radeon Pro WX5100, Green Sardine 5600G, Ryzen 9 4900H with embedded Renoir).] PR: 277476 Reported by: Josef 'Jeff' Sipek <jeffpc@josefsipek.net> Reviewed by: olce Tested by: many (olce, Pierre Pronchery, Evgenii Khramtsov, chaplina, rk) MFC after: 2 weeks Relnotes: yes Sponsored by: The FreeBSD Foundation (review and part of testing)
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