Synthetic filesystem mempressure testing has shown softlockups, with
hour-long page allocation stalls, and pgd_alloc() trying for order:1
with __GFP_REPEAT in one of the backtraces each time.

That's _pgd_alloc() going for a Kaiser double-pgd, using the __GFP_REPEAT
common to all page table allocations, but actually having no effect on
order:0 (see should_alloc_oom() and should_continue_reclaim() in this
tree, but beware that ports to another tree might behave differently).

Order:1 stack allocation has been working satisfactorily without
__GFP_REPEAT forever, and page table allocation only asks __GFP_REPEAT
for awkward occasions in a long-running process: it's not appropriate
at fork or exec time, and seems to be doing much more harm than good:
getting those contiguous pages under very heavy mempressure can be
hard (though even without it, Kaiser does generate more mempressure).

Mask out that __GFP_REPEAT inside _pgd_alloc().  Why not take it out
of the PGALLOG_GFP altogether, as v4.7 commit a3a9a59d ("x86: get
rid of superfluous __GFP_REPEAT") did?  Because I think that might
make a difference to our page table memcg charging, which I'd prefer
not to interfere with at this time.

hughd adds: __alloc_pages_slowpath() in the 4.4.89-stable tree handles
__GFP_REPEAT a little differently than in prod kernel or 3.18.72-stable,
so it may not always be exactly a no-op on order:0 pages, as said above;
but I think still appropriate to omit it from Kaiser or non-Kaiser pgd.
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Acked-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>