Re: [PATCH 3/3] Do not unconditionally treat zones that fail zone_reclaim() as full

From: KOSAKI Motohiro
Date: Tue Jun 09 2009 - 03:48:26 EST


Hi

> On NUMA machines, the administrator can configure zone_reclaim_mode that
> is a more targetted form of direct reclaim. On machines with large NUMA
> distances for example, a zone_reclaim_mode defaults to 1 meaning that clean
> unmapped pages will be reclaimed if the zone watermarks are not being
> met. The problem is that zone_reclaim() failing at all means the zone
> gets marked full.
>
> This can cause situations where a zone is usable, but is being skipped
> because it has been considered full. Take a situation where a large tmpfs
> mount is occuping a large percentage of memory overall. The pages do not
> get cleaned or reclaimed by zone_reclaim(), but the zone gets marked full
> and the zonelist cache considers them not worth trying in the future.
>
> This patch makes zone_reclaim() return more fine-grained information about
> what occured when zone_reclaim() failued. The zone only gets marked full if
> it really is unreclaimable. If it's a case that the scan did not occur or
> if enough pages were not reclaimed with the limited reclaim_mode, then the
> zone is simply skipped.
>
> There is a side-effect to this patch. Currently, if zone_reclaim()
> successfully reclaimed SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX, an allocation attempt would
> go ahead. With this patch applied, zone watermarks are rechecked after
> zone_reclaim() does some work.
>
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> mm/internal.h | 4 ++++
> mm/page_alloc.c | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++----
> mm/vmscan.c | 10 +++++-----
> 3 files changed, 31 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/mm/internal.h b/mm/internal.h
> index 987bb03..090c267 100644
> --- a/mm/internal.h
> +++ b/mm/internal.h
> @@ -284,4 +284,8 @@ int __get_user_pages(struct task_struct *tsk, struct mm_struct *mm,
> unsigned long start, int len, int flags,
> struct page **pages, struct vm_area_struct **vmas);
>
> +#define ZONE_RECLAIM_NOSCAN -2
> +#define ZONE_RECLAIM_FULL -1
> +#define ZONE_RECLAIM_SOME 0
> +#define ZONE_RECLAIM_SUCCESS 1
> #endif
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index fe753ec..ce2f684 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -1420,20 +1420,38 @@ zonelist_scan:
>
> if (!(alloc_flags & ALLOC_NO_WATERMARKS)) {
> unsigned long mark;
> + int ret;

Please insert one empty line here.

> if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_MIN)
> mark = zone->pages_min;
> else if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_LOW)
> mark = zone->pages_low;
> else
> mark = zone->pages_high;
> - if (!zone_watermark_ok(zone, order, mark,
> - classzone_idx, alloc_flags)) {
> - if (!zone_reclaim_mode ||
> - !zone_reclaim(zone, gfp_mask, order))
> + if (zone_watermark_ok(zone, order, mark,
> + classzone_idx, alloc_flags))
> + goto try_this_zone;
> +
> + if (zone_reclaim_mode == 0)
> + goto this_zone_full;
> +
> + ret = zone_reclaim(zone, gfp_mask, order);
> + switch (ret) {
> + case ZONE_RECLAIM_NOSCAN:
> + /* did not scan */
> + goto try_next_zone;
> + case ZONE_RECLAIM_FULL:
> + /* scanned but unreclaimable */
> goto this_zone_full;
> + default:
> + /* did we reclaim enough */
> + if (!zone_watermark_ok(zone, order,
> + mark, classzone_idx,
> + alloc_flags))
> + goto try_next_zone;

hmmm
I haven't catch your mention yet. sorry.
Could you please explain more?

My confuseness are:

1.
----
I think your patch almost revert Paul's 9276b1bc96a132f4068fdee00983c532f43d3a26 essence.
after your patch applied, zlc_mark_zone_full() is called only when zone_is_all_unreclaimable()==1
or memory stealed after zone_watermark_ok() rechecking.

but zone_is_all_unreclaimable() is very rare on large NUMA machine. Thus
your patch makes zlc_zone_worth_trying() check to worthless.
So, I like simple reverting 9276b1bc rather than introduce more messy if necessary.

but necessary? why?


2.
-----
Why simple following switch-case is wrong?

case ZONE_RECLAIM_NOSCAN:
goto try_next_zone;
case ZONE_RECLAIM_FULL:
case ZONE_RECLAIM_SOME:
goto this_zone_full;
case ZONE_RECLAIM_SUCCESS
; /* do nothing */

I mean,
(1) ZONE_RECLAIM_SOME and zone_watermark_ok()==1

are rare.
Is rechecking really worth?
In my experience, zone_watermark_ok() is not so fast function.

And,

(2) ZONE_RECLAIM_SUCCESS and zone_watermark_ok()==0

is also rare.
What do you afraid bad thing?

I guess, high-order allocation and ZONE_RECLAIM_SUCCESS and
zone_watermark_ok()==0 case, right?

if so, Why your system makes high order allocation so freqently?

3.
------
your patch do:

1. call zone_reclaim() and return ZONE_RECLAIM_SUCCESS
2. another thread steal memory
3. call zone_watermark_ok() and return 0

Then, jump to try_next_zone

but

1. call zone_reclaim() and return ZONE_RECLAIM_SUCCESS
2. call zone_watermark_ok() and return 1
3. another thread steal memory
4. call buffered_rmqueue() and return NULL

Then, it call zlc_mark_zone_full().

it seems a bit inconsistency.




> }
> }
>
> +try_this_zone:
> page = buffered_rmqueue(preferred_zone, zone, order, gfp_mask);
> if (page)
> break;
> diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
> index ffe2f32..84cdae2 100644
> --- a/mm/vmscan.c
> +++ b/mm/vmscan.c
> @@ -2409,7 +2409,7 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
> if (pagecache_reclaimable <= zone->min_unmapped_pages
> && zone_page_state(zone, NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE)
> <= zone->min_slab_pages)
> - return 0;
> + return ZONE_RECLAIM_NOSCAN;
>
> /* Do not attempt a scan if scanning failed recently */
> if (time_before(jiffies,
> @@ -2417,13 +2417,13 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
> return 0;
>
> if (zone_is_all_unreclaimable(zone))
> - return 0;
> + return ZONE_RECLAIM_FULL;
>
> /*
> * Do not scan if the allocation should not be delayed.
> */
> if (!(gfp_mask & __GFP_WAIT) || (current->flags & PF_MEMALLOC))
> - return 0;
> + return ZONE_RECLAIM_NOSCAN;
>
> /*
> * Only run zone reclaim on the local zone or on zones that do not
> @@ -2433,10 +2433,10 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
> */
> node_id = zone_to_nid(zone);
> if (node_state(node_id, N_CPU) && node_id != numa_node_id())
> - return 0;
> + return ZONE_RECLAIM_NOSCAN;
>
> if (zone_test_and_set_flag(zone, ZONE_RECLAIM_LOCKED))
> - return 0;
> + return ZONE_RECLAIM_NOSCAN;
> ret = __zone_reclaim(zone, gfp_mask, order);
> zone_clear_flag(zone, ZONE_RECLAIM_LOCKED);
>
> --
> 1.5.6.5
>



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