[ 3.8.y.z extended stable ] Patch "powerpc/iommu: Use GFP_KERNEL instead of GFP_ATOMIC in" has been added to staging queue

[Kamal Mostafa]

This is a note to let you know that I have just added a patch titled

    powerpc/iommu: Use GFP_KERNEL instead of GFP_ATOMIC in

to the linux-3.8.y-queue branch of the 3.8.y.z extended stable tree 
which can be found at:

 http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubuntu/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/linux-3.8.y-queue

This patch is scheduled to be released in version 3.8.13.11.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to this tree, please 
reply to this email.

For more information about the 3.8.y.z tree, see
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Thanks.
-Kamal

------

>From 39e9fee90dc066578e765bdfc9393ff2e571c810 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2013 14:04:53 -0700
Subject: powerpc/iommu: Use GFP_KERNEL instead of GFP_ATOMIC in
 iommu_init_table()

commit 1cf389df090194a0976dc867b7fffe99d9d490cb upstream.

Under heavy (DLPAR?) stress, we tripped this panic() in
arch/powerpc/kernel/iommu.c::iommu_init_table():

	page = alloc_pages_node(nid, GFP_ATOMIC, get_order(sz));
	if (!page)
		panic("iommu_init_table: Can't allocate %ld bytes\n", sz);

Before the panic() we got a page allocation failure for an order-2
allocation. There appears to be memory free, but perhaps not in the
ATOMIC context. I looked through all the call-sites of
iommu_init_table() and didn't see any obvious reason to need an ATOMIC
allocation. Most call-sites in fact have an explicit GFP_KERNEL
allocation shortly before the call to iommu_init_table(), indicating we
are not in an atomic context. There is some indirection for some paths,
but I didn't see any locks indicating that GFP_KERNEL is inappropriate.

With this change under the same conditions, we have not been able to
reproduce the panic.

Signed-off-by: Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc at us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh at kernel.crashing.org>
Signed-off-by: Kamal Mostafa <kamal at canonical.com>
---
 arch/powerpc/kernel/iommu.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/arch/powerpc/kernel/iommu.c b/arch/powerpc/kernel/iommu.c
index c862fd7..0eb8da2 100644
--- a/arch/powerpc/kernel/iommu.c
+++ b/arch/powerpc/kernel/iommu.c
@@ -658,7 +658,7 @@ struct iommu_table *iommu_init_table(struct iommu_table *tbl, int nid)
 	/* number of bytes needed for the bitmap */
 	sz = BITS_TO_LONGS(tbl->it_size) * sizeof(unsigned long);

-	page = alloc_pages_node(nid, GFP_ATOMIC, get_order(sz));
+	page = alloc_pages_node(nid, GFP_KERNEL, get_order(sz));
 	if (!page)
 		panic("iommu_init_table: Can't allocate %ld bytes\n", sz);
 	tbl->it_map = page_address(page);
--
1.8.1.2