Re: kswapd in tight loop 2.6.9-rc3-bk-recent

From: Nick Piggin
Date: Thu Oct 07 2004 - 23:02:43 EST




Andrew Morton wrote:

Nick Piggin <piggin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Ah, free_pages <= pages_high, ie. 0 <= 0, which is true;

>> commence spinning.
>>
>
>Maybe. It requires that the zonelists be screwy:
>
> Node 1 DMA free:0kB min:0kB low:0kB high:0kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB
> protections[]: 0 0 0
> Node 1 Normal free:25272kB min:1020kB low:2040kB high:3060kB active:624172kB inactive:282700kB present:1047936kB
> protections[]: 0 0 0
> Node 1 HighMem free:0kB min:128kB low:256kB high:384kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB
> protections[]: 0 0 0
> Node 0 DMA free:728kB min:12kB low:24kB high:36kB active:788kB inactive:7848kB present:16384kB
> protections[]: 0 0 0
> Node 0 Normal free:27200kB min:1004kB low:2008kB high:3012kB active:332792kB inactive:422744kB present:1032188kB
> protections[]: 0 0 0
> Node 0 HighMem free:0kB min:128kB low:256kB high:384kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB
> protections[]: 0 0 0
>
>See that DMA zone on node 1? Wonder how it got like that. It
>should not be inside pgdat->nrzones anyway.
>
>
Oh? Why not? I didn't think empty zones were filtered out?


That ininitialised zone should be outside pgdat->nr_zones, no?


(perhaps they should be).


They will be.


I don't think the DMA side will be skipped though? Because you're
always counting down from nr_zones... That would be what it is
what it is spinning on.


Chris, do you have time to test this, against -linus?



I think my patch would be sufficient to handle the kswapd side
(yours would be valid too, but no need to add the extra checks).

diff -puN mm/vmscan.c~vmscan-handle-empty-zones mm/vmscan.c
--- 25/mm/vmscan.c~vmscan-handle-empty-zones 2004-10-07 19:10:52.844797784 -0700
+++ 25-akpm/mm/vmscan.c 2004-10-07 19:11:49.804138648 -0700
@@ -851,6 +851,9 @@ shrink_caches(struct zone **zones, struc
for (i = 0; zones[i] != NULL; i++) {
struct zone *zone = zones[i];

+ if (zone->present_pages == 0)
+ continue;
+
zone->temp_priority = sc->priority;
if (zone->prev_priority > sc->priority)
zone->prev_priority = sc->priority;


...but could probably use something like this as well, for the
direct reclaim side.

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