]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/kernel/stable.git/commit
mm, page_alloc: reintroduce page allocation stall warning
authorDavid Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:20:57 +0000 (18:20 -0700)
committerAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Fri, 29 May 2026 04:04:51 +0000 (21:04 -0700)
commit94e0bcde055ee1bd758218ec3a4ff098874123ac
tree12a63bc67f049b10d3b234998737f3561853f75f
parentb9fe373e7d3c5a0814fe45d8cb41f649ed5e244d
mm, page_alloc: reintroduce page allocation stall warning

Previously, we had warnings when a single page allocation took longer than
reasonably expected.  This was introduced in commit 63f53dea0c98 ("mm:
warn about allocations which stall for too long").

The warning was subsequently reverted in commit 400e22499dd9 ("mm: don't
warn about allocations which stall for too long") because it was possible
to generate memory pressure that would effectively stall further progress
through printk execution.

Page allocation stalls in excess of 10 seconds are always useful to debug
because they can result in severe userspace unresponsiveness.  Adding this
artifact can be used to correlate with userspace going out to lunch and to
understand the state of memory at the time.

There should be a reasonable expectation that this warning will never
trigger given it is very passive, it will only be emitted when a page
allocation takes longer than 10 seconds.  If it does trigger, this reveals
an issue that should be fixed: a single page allocation should never loop
for more than 10 seconds without oom killing to make memory available.

Unlike the original implementation, this implementation only reports
stalls once for the system every 10 seconds.  Otherwise, many concurrent
reclaimers could spam the kernel log unnecessarily.  Stalls are only
reported when calling into direct reclaim.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/371c86c8-1d47-bd70-b74c-769842718b1f@google.com
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka (SUSE) <vbabka@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@google.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@kernel.org>
Cc: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
mm/page_alloc.c