diff --git a/fs/xfs/kmem.h b/fs/xfs/kmem.h
index d6ea520162b26530bbb560b667d925b6c6690b63..4d85992d75b225968d0055aec9d48888dfdd2dd8 100644
--- a/fs/xfs/kmem.h
+++ b/fs/xfs/kmem.h
@@ -54,6 +54,16 @@ kmem_flags_convert(xfs_km_flags_t flags)
 			lflags &= ~__GFP_FS;
 	}
 
+	/*
+	 * Default page/slab allocator behavior is to retry for ever
+	 * for small allocations. We can override this behavior by using
+	 * __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL which will tell the allocator to retry as long
+	 * as it is feasible but rather fail than retry forever for all
+	 * request sizes.
+	 */
+	if (flags & KM_MAYFAIL)
+		lflags |= __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL;
+
 	if (flags & KM_ZERO)
 		lflags |= __GFP_ZERO;