[PATCH] Cpuset: might sleep checking zones allowed fix

[PATCH] Cpuset: might sleep checking zones allowed fix

Fix a couple of infrequently encountered 'sleeping function called from
invalid context' in the cpuset hooks in __alloc_pages.  Could sleep while
interrupts disabled.

The routine cpuset_zone_allowed() is called by code in mm/page_alloc.c
__alloc_pages() to determine if a zone is allowed in the current tasks
cpuset.  This routine can sleep, for certain GFP_KERNEL allocations, if the
zone is on a memory node not allowed in the current cpuset, but might be
allowed in a parent cpuset.

But we can't sleep in __alloc_pages() if in interrupt, nor if called for a
GFP_ATOMIC request (__GFP_WAIT not set in gfp_flags).

The rule was intended to be:
  Don't call cpuset_zone_allowed() if you can't sleep, unless you
  pass in the __GFP_HARDWALL flag set in gfp_flag, which disables
  the code that might scan up ancestor cpusets and sleep.

This rule was being violated in a couple of places, due to a bogus change
made (by myself, pj) to __alloc_pages() as part of the November 2005 effort
to cleanup its logic, and also due to a later fix to constrain which swap
daemons were awoken.

The bogus change can be seen at:
  http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Kernel/2005-11/4691.html
  [PATCH 01/05] mm fix __alloc_pages cpuset ALLOC_* flags

This was first noticed on a tight memory system, in code that was disabling
interrupts and doing allocation requests with __GFP_WAIT not set, which
resulted in __might_sleep() writing complaints to the log "Debug: sleeping
function called ...", when the code in cpuset_zone_allowed() tried to take
the callback_sem cpuset semaphore.

We haven't seen a system hang on this 'might_sleep' yet, but we are at
decent risk of seeing it fairly soon, especially since the additional
cpuset_zone_allowed() check was added, conditioning wakeup_kswapd(), in
March 2006.

Special thanks to Dave Chinner, for figuring this out, and a tip of the hat
to Nick Piggin who warned me of this back in Nov 2005, before I was ready
to listen.

Signed-off-by: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>