GitLab

Mike Kravetz reports that "hugetlb allocations could stall for minutes or
hours when should_compact_retry() would return true more often then it
should.  Specifically, this was in the case where compact_result was
COMPACT_DEFERRED and COMPACT_PARTIAL_SKIPPED and no progress was being
made."

The problem is that the compaction_withdrawn() test in
should_compact_retry() includes compaction outcomes that are only possible
on low compaction priority, and results in a retry without increasing the
priority.  This may result in furter reclaim, and more incomplete
compaction attempts.

With this patch, compaction priority is raised when possible, or
should_compact_retry() returns false.

The COMPACT_SKIPPED result doesn't really fit together with the other
outcomes in compaction_withdrawn(), as that's a result caused by
insufficient order-0 pages, not due to low compaction priority.  With this
patch, it is moved to a new compaction_needs_reclaim() func...