Commit 21e50013 authored by Pavel Tikhomirov's avatar Pavel Tikhomirov Committed by Jonathan Corbet
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docs: core-api/gfp_mask-from-fs-io: indicate that vmalloc supports GFP_NOFS/GFP_NOIO



After the commit 451769eb ("mm/vmalloc: alloc GFP_NO{FS,IO} for
vmalloc") in v5.17 it is now safe to use GFP_NOFS/GFP_NOIO flags
in [k]vmalloc, let's reflect it in documentation.

Signed-off-by: default avatarPavel Tikhomirov <ptikhomirov@virtuozzo.com>
Acked-by: default avatarMichal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20241119093922.567138-1-ptikhomirov@virtuozzo.com
parent 9e6c5870
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+11 −9
Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -55,14 +55,16 @@ scope.
What about __vmalloc(GFP_NOFS)
==============================

vmalloc doesn't support GFP_NOFS semantic because there are hardcoded
GFP_KERNEL allocations deep inside the allocator which are quite non-trivial
to fix up. That means that calling ``vmalloc`` with GFP_NOFS/GFP_NOIO is
almost always a bug. The good news is that the NOFS/NOIO semantic can be
achieved by the scope API.
Since v5.17, and specifically after the commit 451769ebb7e79 ("mm/vmalloc:
alloc GFP_NO{FS,IO} for vmalloc"), GFP_NOFS/GFP_NOIO are now supported in
``[k]vmalloc`` by implicitly using scope API.

In earlier kernels ``vmalloc`` didn't support GFP_NOFS semantic because there
were hardcoded GFP_KERNEL allocations deep inside the allocator. That means
that calling ``vmalloc`` with GFP_NOFS/GFP_NOIO was almost always a bug.

In the ideal world, upper layers should already mark dangerous contexts
and so no special care is required and vmalloc should be called without
any problems. Sometimes if the context is not really clear or there are
layering violations then the recommended way around that is to wrap ``vmalloc``
by the scope API with a comment explaining the problem.
and so no special care is required and ``vmalloc`` should be called without any
problems. Sometimes if the context is not really clear or there are layering
violations then the recommended way around that (on pre-v5.17 kernels) is to
wrap ``vmalloc`` by the scope API with a comment explaining the problem.