Re: [RFC PATCH] mm: memcg/slab: Stop reparented obj_cgroups from charging root

From: Richard Palethorpe
Date: Fri Oct 16 2020 - 06:41:47 EST


Hello Michal,

Michal Koutný <mkoutny@xxxxxxxx> writes:

> Hello.
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 08:07:49PM +0100, Richard Palethorpe <rpalethorpe@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> SLAB objects which outlive their memcg are moved to their parent
>> memcg where they may be uncharged. However if they are moved to the
>> root memcg, uncharging will result in negative page counter values as
>> root has no page counters.
> Why do you think those are reparented objects? If those are originally
> charged in a non-root cgroup, then the charge value should be propagated up the
> hierarchy, including root memcg, so if they're later uncharged in root
> after reparenting, it should still break even. (Or did I miss some stock
> imbalance?)

I traced it and can see they are reparented objects and that the root
groups counters are zero (or negative if I run madvise06 multiple times)
before a drain takes place. I'm guessing this is because the root group
has 'use_hierachy' set to false so that the childs page_counter parents
are set to NULL. However I will check, because I'm not sure about
either.

>
> (But the patch seems justifiable to me as objects (not)charged directly to
> root memcg may be incorrectly uncharged.)
>
> Thanks,
> Michal


--
Thank you,
Richard.