[PATCH 2/3] mm: Ensure that mark_page_accessed moves pages to the active list

[Mel Gorman]

If a page is on a pagevec then it is !PageLRU and mark_page_accessed()
may fail to move a page to the active list as expected. Now that the
LRU is selected at LRU drain time, mark pages PageActive if they are
on a pagevec so it gets moved to the correct list at LRU drain time.
Using a debugging patch it was found that for a simple git checkout
based workload that pages were never added to the active file list in
practice but with this patch applied they are.

				before   after
LRU Add Active File                  0  757121
LRU Add Active Anon            2678833 2633924
LRU Add Inactive File          8821711 8085543
LRU Add Inactive Anon              183     200

The question to consider is if this is universally safe. If the page
was isolated for reclaim and there is a parallel mark_page_accessed()
then vmscan.c will get upset when it finds an isolated PageActive page.
Similarly a potential race exists between a per-cpu drain on a pagevec
list and an activation on a remote CPU.

				lru_add_drain_cpu
				__pagevec_lru_add
				  lru = page_lru(page);
mark_page_accessed
  if (PageLRU(page))
    activate_page
  else
    SetPageActive
				  SetPageLRU(page);
				  add_page_to_lru_list(page, lruvec, lru);

A PageActive page is now added to the inactivate list.

While this looks strange, I think it is sufficiently harmless that additional
barriers to address the case is not justified.  Unfortunately, while I never
witnessed it myself, these parallel updates potentially trigger defensive
DEBUG_VM checks on PageActive and hence they are removed by this patch.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>
---
 mm/swap.c   | 18 ++++++++++++------
 mm/vmscan.c |  3 ---
 2 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/swap.c b/mm/swap.c
index 80fbc37..2a10d08 100644
--- a/mm/swap.c
+++ b/mm/swap.c
@@ -437,8 +437,17 @@ void activate_page(struct page *page)
 void mark_page_accessed(struct page *page)
 {
 	if (!PageActive(page) && !PageUnevictable(page) &&
-			PageReferenced(page) && PageLRU(page)) {
-		activate_page(page);
+			PageReferenced(page)) {
+
+		/*
+		 * If the page is on the LRU, promote immediately. Otherwise,
+		 * assume the page is on a pagevec, mark it active and it'll
+		 * be moved to the active LRU on the next drain
+		 */
+		if (PageLRU(page))
+			activate_page(page);
+		else
+			SetPageActive(page);
 		ClearPageReferenced(page);
 	} else if (!PageReferenced(page)) {
 		SetPageReferenced(page);
@@ -478,11 +487,8 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(__lru_cache_add);
  */
 void lru_cache_add_lru(struct page *page, enum lru_list lru)
 {
-	if (PageActive(page)) {
+	if (PageActive(page))
 		VM_BUG_ON(PageUnevictable(page));
-	} else if (PageUnevictable(page)) {
-		VM_BUG_ON(PageActive(page));
-	}
 
 	VM_BUG_ON(PageLRU(page));
 	__lru_cache_add(page, lru);
diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index 88c5fed..751b897 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -704,7 +704,6 @@ static unsigned long shrink_page_list(struct list_head *page_list,
 		if (!trylock_page(page))
 			goto keep;
 
-		VM_BUG_ON(PageActive(page));
 		VM_BUG_ON(page_zone(page) != zone);
 
 		sc->nr_scanned++;
@@ -935,7 +934,6 @@ activate_locked:
 		/* Not a candidate for swapping, so reclaim swap space. */
 		if (PageSwapCache(page) && vm_swap_full())
 			try_to_free_swap(page);
-		VM_BUG_ON(PageActive(page));
 		SetPageActive(page);
 		pgactivate++;
 keep_locked:
@@ -3488,7 +3486,6 @@ void check_move_unevictable_pages(struct page **pages, int nr_pages)
 		if (page_evictable(page)) {
 			enum lru_list lru = page_lru_base_type(page);
 
-			VM_BUG_ON(PageActive(page));
 			ClearPageUnevictable(page);
 			del_page_from_lru_list(page, lruvec, LRU_UNEVICTABLE);
 			add_page_to_lru_list(page, lruvec, lru);
-- 
1.8.1.4

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/