--- zzzz-none-000/linux-3.10.107/Documentation/vm/balance 2017-06-27 09:49:32.000000000 +0000 +++ scorpion-7490-727/linux-3.10.107/Documentation/vm/balance 2021-02-04 17:41:59.000000000 +0000 @@ -1,12 +1,14 @@ Started Jan 2000 by Kanoj Sarcar -Memory balancing is needed for non __GFP_WAIT as well as for non -__GFP_IO allocations. +Memory balancing is needed for !__GFP_ATOMIC and !__GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM as +well as for non __GFP_IO allocations. -There are two reasons to be requesting non __GFP_WAIT allocations: -the caller can not sleep (typically intr context), or does not want -to incur cost overheads of page stealing and possible swap io for -whatever reasons. +The first reason why a caller may avoid reclaim is that the caller can not +sleep due to holding a spinlock or is in interrupt context. The second may +be that the caller is willing to fail the allocation without incurring the +overhead of page reclaim. This may happen for opportunistic high-order +allocation requests that have order-0 fallback options. In such cases, +the caller may also wish to avoid waking kswapd. __GFP_IO allocation requests are made to prevent file system deadlocks.