mm, compaction: restrict fragindex to costly orders

Fragmentation index and the vm.extfrag_threshold sysctl is meant as a
heuristic to prevent excessive compaction for costly orders (i.e.  THP).
It's unlikely to make any difference for non-costly orders, especially
with the default threshold.  But we cannot afford any uncertainty for
the non-costly orders where the only alternative to successful
reclaim/compaction is OOM.  After the recent patches we are guaranteed
maximum effort without heuristics from compaction before deciding OOM,
and fragindex is the last remaining heuristic.  Therefore skip fragindex
altogether for non-costly orders.

Suggested-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160926162025.21555-5-vbabka@suse.cz
Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/mm/compaction.c b/mm/compaction.c
index b918bdb..0409a4a 100644
--- a/mm/compaction.c
+++ b/mm/compaction.c
@@ -1435,9 +1435,14 @@ enum compact_result compaction_suitable(struct zone *zone, int order,
 	 * index towards 0 implies failure is due to lack of memory
 	 * index towards 1000 implies failure is due to fragmentation
 	 *
-	 * Only compact if a failure would be due to fragmentation.
+	 * Only compact if a failure would be due to fragmentation. Also
+	 * ignore fragindex for non-costly orders where the alternative to
+	 * a successful reclaim/compaction is OOM. Fragindex and the
+	 * vm.extfrag_threshold sysctl is meant as a heuristic to prevent
+	 * excessive compaction for costly orders, but it should not be at the
+	 * expense of system stability.
 	 */
-	if (ret == COMPACT_CONTINUE) {
+	if (ret == COMPACT_CONTINUE && (order > PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER)) {
 		fragindex = fragmentation_index(zone, order);
 		if (fragindex >= 0 && fragindex <= sysctl_extfrag_threshold)
 			ret = COMPACT_NOT_SUITABLE_ZONE;