mempolicy: use MPOL_PREFERRED for system-wide default policy

Currently, when one specifies MPOL_DEFAULT via a NUMA memory policy API
[set_mempolicy(), mbind() and internal versions], the kernel simply installs a
NULL struct mempolicy pointer in the appropriate context: task policy, vma
policy, or shared policy.  This causes any use of that policy to "fall back"
to the next most specific policy scope.

The only use of MPOL_DEFAULT to mean "local allocation" is in the system
default policy.  This requires extra checks/cases for MPOL_DEFAULT in many
mempolicy.c functions.

There is another, "preferred" way to specify local allocation via the APIs.
That is using the MPOL_PREFERRED policy mode with an empty nodemask.
Internally, the empty nodemask gets converted to a preferred_node id of '-1'.
All internal usage of MPOL_PREFERRED will convert the '-1' to the id of the
node local to the cpu where the allocation occurs.

System default policy, except during boot, is hard-coded to "local
allocation".  By using the MPOL_PREFERRED mode with a negative value of
preferred node for system default policy, MPOL_DEFAULT will never occur in the
'policy' member of a struct mempolicy.  Thus, we can remove all checks for
MPOL_DEFAULT when converting policy to a node id/zonelist in the allocation
paths.

In slab_node() return local node id when policy pointer is NULL.  No need to
set a pol value to take the switch default.  Replace switch default with
BUG()--i.e., shouldn't happen.

With this patch MPOL_DEFAULT is only used in the APIs, including internal
calls to do_set_mempolicy() and in the display of policy in
/proc/<pid>/numa_maps.  It always means "fall back" to the the next most
specific policy scope.  This simplifies the description of memory policies
quite a bit, with no visible change in behavior.

get_mempolicy() continues to return MPOL_DEFAULT and an empty nodemask when
the requested policy [task or vma/shared] is NULL.  These are the values one
would supply via set_mempolicy() or mbind() to achieve that condition--default
behavior.

This patch updates Documentation to reflect this change.

Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions