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c2f6ea38fc
The fallback code searches for the biggest buddy first in an attempt to steal the whole block and encourage type grouping down the line. The approach used to be this: - Non-movable requests will split the largest buddy and steal the remainder. This splits up contiguity, but it allows subsequent requests of this type to fall back into adjacent space. - Movable requests go and look for the smallest buddy instead. The thinking is that movable requests can be compacted, so grouping is less important than retaining contiguity.c0cd6f557b("mm: page_alloc: fix freelist movement during block conversion") enforces freelist type hygiene, which restricts stealing to either claiming the whole block or just taking the requested chunk; no additional pages or buddy remainders can be stolen any more. The patch mishandled when to switch to finding the smallest buddy in that new reality. As a result, it may steal the exact request size, but from the biggest buddy. This causes fracturing for no good reason. Fix this by committing to the new behavior: either steal the whole block, or fall back to the smallest buddy. Remove single-page stealing from steal_suitable_fallback(). Rename it to try_to_steal_block() to make the intentions clear. If this fails, always fall back to the smallest buddy. The following is from 4 runs of mmtest's thpchallenge. "Pollute" is single page fallback, "steal" is conversion of a partially used block. The numbers for free block conversions (omitted) are comparable. vanilla patched @pollute[unmovable from reclaimable]: 27 106 @pollute[unmovable from movable]: 82 46 @pollute[reclaimable from unmovable]: 256 83 @pollute[reclaimable from movable]: 46 8 @pollute[movable from unmovable]: 4841 868 @pollute[movable from reclaimable]: 5278 12568 @steal[unmovable from reclaimable]: 11 12 @steal[unmovable from movable]: 113 49 @steal[reclaimable from unmovable]: 19 34 @steal[reclaimable from movable]: 47 21 @steal[movable from unmovable]: 250 183 @steal[movable from reclaimable]: 81 93 The allocator appears to do a better job at keeping stealing and polluting to the first fallback preference. As a result, the numbers for "from movable" - the least preferred fallback option, and most detrimental to compactability - are down across the board. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250225001023.1494422-2-hannes@cmpxchg.org Fixes:c0cd6f557b("mm: page_alloc: fix freelist movement during block conversion") Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Suggested-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Reviewed-by: Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@google.com> Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
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 reStructuredText 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.