[PATCH] out of memory notifier

Add a notifer chain to the out of memory killer.  If one of the registered
callbacks could release some memory, do not kill the process but return and
retry the allocation that forced the oom killer to run.

The purpose of the notifier is to add a safety net in the presence of
memory ballooners.  If the resource manager inflated the balloon to a size
where memory allocations can not be satisfied anymore, it is better to
deflate the balloon a bit instead of killing processes.

The implementation for the s390 ballooner is included.

[akpm@osdl.org: cleanups]
Signed-off-by: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 22 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/mm/oom_kill.c b/mm/oom_kill.c
index b9af136e5cfa..7d056843fa2d 100644
--- a/mm/oom_kill.c
+++ b/mm/oom_kill.c
@@ -21,6 +21,8 @@
 #include <linux/timex.h>
 #include <linux/jiffies.h>
 #include <linux/cpuset.h>
+#include <linux/module.h>
+#include <linux/notifier.h>
 
 int sysctl_panic_on_oom;
 /* #define DEBUG */
@@ -306,6 +308,20 @@ static int oom_kill_process(struct task_struct *p, unsigned long points,
         return oom_kill_task(p, message);
 }
 
+static BLOCKING_NOTIFIER_HEAD(oom_notify_list);
+
+int register_oom_notifier(struct notifier_block *nb)
+{
+        return blocking_notifier_chain_register(&oom_notify_list, nb);
+}
+EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(register_oom_notifier);
+
+int unregister_oom_notifier(struct notifier_block *nb)
+{
+        return blocking_notifier_chain_unregister(&oom_notify_list, nb);
+}
+EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(unregister_oom_notifier);
+
 /**
  * out_of_memory - kill the "best" process when we run out of memory
  *
@@ -318,6 +334,12 @@ void out_of_memory(struct zonelist *zonelist, gfp_t gfp_mask, int order)
 {
         struct task_struct *p;
         unsigned long points = 0;
+        unsigned long freed = 0;
+
+        blocking_notifier_call_chain(&oom_notify_list, 0, &freed);
+        if (freed > 0)
+                /* Got some memory back in the last second. */
+                return;
 
         if (printk_ratelimit()) {
                 printk("oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x%x, order=%d\n",