[3.16.y-ckt stable] Patch "ext4: replace open coded nofail allocation in ext4_free_blocks()" has been added to staging queue

Luis Henriques luis.henriques at canonical.com
Tue Aug 11 12:54:52 UTC 2015


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

    ext4: replace open coded nofail allocation in ext4_free_blocks()

to the linux-3.16.y-queue branch of the 3.16.y-ckt extended stable tree 
which can be found at:

    http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git/ubuntu/linux.git/log/?h=linux-3.16.y-queue

This patch is scheduled to be released in version 3.16.7-ckt16.

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

For more information about the 3.16.y-ckt tree, see
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Thanks.
-Luis

------

>From 4057c3b6468b4ef46121752d3ad03a476896188b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Michal Hocko <mhocko at suse.cz>
Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2015 12:33:44 -0400
Subject: ext4: replace open coded nofail allocation in ext4_free_blocks()

commit 7444a072c387a93ebee7066e8aee776954ab0e41 upstream.

ext4_free_blocks is looping around the allocation request and mimics
__GFP_NOFAIL behavior without any allocation fallback strategy. Let's
remove the open coded loop and replace it with __GFP_NOFAIL. Without the
flag the allocator has no way to find out never-fail requirement and
cannot help in any way.

Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko at suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Luis Henriques <luis.henriques at canonical.com>
---
 fs/ext4/mballoc.c | 16 +++++-----------
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/ext4/mballoc.c b/fs/ext4/mballoc.c
index c3e7418a6811..47f7af78675a 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/mballoc.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/mballoc.c
@@ -4810,18 +4810,12 @@ do_more:
 		/*
 		 * blocks being freed are metadata. these blocks shouldn't
 		 * be used until this transaction is committed
+		 *
+		 * We use __GFP_NOFAIL because ext4_free_blocks() is not allowed
+		 * to fail.
 		 */
-	retry:
-		new_entry = kmem_cache_alloc(ext4_free_data_cachep, GFP_NOFS);
-		if (!new_entry) {
-			/*
-			 * We use a retry loop because
-			 * ext4_free_blocks() is not allowed to fail.
-			 */
-			cond_resched();
-			congestion_wait(BLK_RW_ASYNC, HZ/50);
-			goto retry;
-		}
+		new_entry = kmem_cache_alloc(ext4_free_data_cachep,
+				GFP_NOFS|__GFP_NOFAIL);
 		new_entry->efd_start_cluster = bit;
 		new_entry->efd_group = block_group;
 		new_entry->efd_count = count_clusters;




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