Vlastimil Babka [off-list ref] writes:

On 05/23/2014 04:48 AM, Shawn Guo wrote:

quoted

On 23 May 2014 07:49, Kevin Hilman [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 2:47 AM, Vlastimil Babka [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Compaction uses compact_checklock_irqsave() function to periodically check for
lock contention and need_resched() to either abort async compaction, or to
free the lock, schedule and retake the lock. When aborting, cc->contended is
set to signal the contended state to the caller. Two problems have been
identified in this mechanism.

This patch (or later version) has hit next-20140522 (in the form
commit 645ceea9331bfd851bc21eea456dda27862a10f4) and according to my
bisect, appears to be the culprit of several boot failures on ARM
platforms.

On i.MX6 where CMA is enabled, the commit causes the drivers calling
dma_alloc_coherent() fail to probe.  Tracing it a little bit, it seems
dma_alloc_from_contiguous() always return page as NULL after this
commit.

Shawn

Really sorry, guys :/

-----8<-----
From: Vlastimil Babka <redacted>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2014 10:18:56 +0200
Subject: mm-compaction-properly-signal-and-act-upon-lock-and-need_sched-contention-fix2

Step 1: Change function name and comment between v1 and v2 so that the return
        value signals the opposite thing.
Step 2: Change the call sites to reflect the opposite return value.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Make a complete fool of yourself.
Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <redacted>

Tested-by: Kevin Hilman <redacted>

I verified that this fixes the boot failures I've seen on ARM (i.MX6 and
Marvell Armada 370).

Thanks for the quick fix.

Kevin