diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index 6965be064a31..0a502e99ee22 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -1461,7 +1461,8 @@ __alloc_pages_internal(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
 	struct task_struct *p = current;
 	int do_retry;
 	int alloc_flags;
-	int did_some_progress;
+	unsigned long did_some_progress;
+	unsigned long pages_reclaimed = 0;
 
 	might_sleep_if(wait);
 
@@ -1611,15 +1612,26 @@ nofail_alloc:
 	 * Don't let big-order allocations loop unless the caller explicitly
 	 * requests that.  Wait for some write requests to complete then retry.
 	 *
-	 * In this implementation, either order <= PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER or
-	 * __GFP_REPEAT mean __GFP_NOFAIL, but that may not be true in other
+	 * In this implementation, order <= PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER
+	 * means __GFP_NOFAIL, but that may not be true in other
 	 * implementations.
+	 *
+	 * For order > PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER, if __GFP_REPEAT is
+	 * specified, then we retry until we no longer reclaim any pages
+	 * (above), or we've reclaimed an order of pages at least as
+	 * large as the allocation's order. In both cases, if the
+	 * allocation still fails, we stop retrying.
 	 */
+	pages_reclaimed += did_some_progress;
 	do_retry = 0;
 	if (!(gfp_mask & __GFP_NORETRY)) {
-		if ((order <= PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER) ||
-						(gfp_mask & __GFP_REPEAT))
+		if (order <= PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER) {
 			do_retry = 1;
+		} else {
+			if (gfp_mask & __GFP_REPEAT &&
+				pages_reclaimed < (1 << order))
+					do_retry = 1;
+		}
 		if (gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL)
 			do_retry = 1;
 	}
diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index eceac9f9032f..12e8627c9747 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -1299,6 +1299,9 @@ static unsigned long shrink_zones(int priority, struct zonelist *zonelist,
  * hope that some of these pages can be written.  But if the allocating task
  * holds filesystem locks which prevent writeout this might not work, and the
  * allocation attempt will fail.
+ *
+ * returns:	0, if no pages reclaimed
+ * 		else, the number of pages reclaimed
  */
 static unsigned long do_try_to_free_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist,
 					struct scan_control *sc)
@@ -1347,7 +1350,7 @@ static unsigned long do_try_to_free_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist,
 		}
 		total_scanned += sc->nr_scanned;
 		if (nr_reclaimed >= sc->swap_cluster_max) {
-			ret = 1;
+			ret = nr_reclaimed;
 			goto out;
 		}
 
@@ -1370,7 +1373,7 @@ static unsigned long do_try_to_free_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist,
 	}
 	/* top priority shrink_caches still had more to do? don't OOM, then */
 	if (!sc->all_unreclaimable && scan_global_lru(sc))
-		ret = 1;
+		ret = nr_reclaimed;
 out:
 	/*
 	 * Now that we've scanned all the zones at this priority level, note