Re: suspend2 merge (was Re: [Suspend2-devel] Re: CFS and suspend2:hang in atomic copy)

[Nigel Cunningham]

Hi.

On Thu, 2007-04-26 at 22:37 +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> On Thursday, 26 April 2007 22:16, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> > Hi.
> > 
> > On Thu, 2007-04-26 at 21:28 +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> > > On Thursday, 26 April 2007 18:10, Pekka Enberg wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > On 4/26/2007, "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > > In principle, we could add suspend2 as an alternative (in analogy with the I/O
> > > > > schedulers, for example), but I think for this purpose it should be reviewed
> > > > > properly.
> > > > 
> > > > Yeah, this makes sense.
> > > > 
> > > > On 4/26/2007, "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > > There also is a real problem with how it uses the LRU pages.  It _seems_ to
> > > > > work, but at least to me it seems to be potentially dangerous.
> > > > 
> > > > I am new to suspend2 so can you please explain what exactly is dangerous
> > > > about it?
> > > 
> > > After freezing tasks, it first saves the contents of the LRU pages, freezes
> > > devices and then uses the LRU pages for storing the suspend image (if more
> > > memory is needed, it's allocated, but that's irrelevant here).  Now, we have no
> > > warranty that the LRU pages are not updated after we've saved their contents
> > > (first potential problem here).
> > > 
> > > After the image has been created, we have to unfreeze devices and save the
> > > image.  Now, we have no warranty that no one will be writing to the LRU pages
> > > that we have used to store the image, for whatever reasons known to him, so the
> > > image can potentially get corrupted while it's being saved.
> > > 
> > > In principle, device drivers can do this and there are some kernel threads that
> > > also can do this (we don't freeze them, because they're needed for the image
> > > saving).
> > > 
> > > The design is conceptually really really complicated and it makes strong
> > > assumptions about the behavior of different subsystems.  While these
> > > assumptions _may_ be satisfied right now, we'd have to ensure the satisfaction
> > > of them in the future if suspend2 were merged.
> > 
> > That's a good description of the issue, although I think _may_ and
> > _seems_ are stating things a bit more pessimistically than is
> > necessary. 
> 
> I've used them to express my personal concerns.
> 
> > You see, we need to remember that the pages which are saved separately
> > are LRU pages. Because userspace is frozen, their contents are going to
> > be static. The only possibilities for modifying them come from timer
> > routines, improperly frozen filesystems and device drivers.
> 
> And kernel threads that we don't freeze deliberately.  Currently, these are
> all worker threads, dm-related kernel threads and some others.
> 
> > We have code to check that the LRU isn't changing, and I've only seen
> > one report of modifications to about 20 LRU pages. I haven't had the
> > time yet to chase down the cause, but hope to do so soon.
> 
> I didn't say that would be common.  If it had been, you'd have seen problems
> with it.  To me the problem is the lack of warranty that it won't happen.
> 
> > The general scheme has been working for four or five years - if there
> > was a fundamental issue, we would have found it by now.
> > 
> > The scheme isn't complicated.
> 
> Conceptually, it is complicated just because you're using the LRU.

Well, I'm willing to look at other ideas. I actually selected LRU
because it was simple. Prior to this, we did have a try at just
iterating over the pages of frozen processes, but it didn't yield enough
pages to be viable. I wouldn't be surprised if hunting down the cause of
these changing pages leads to doing the opposite - starting with LRU
pages and then removing all the ones owned by processes. (Am I right in
thinking the remainder would be anonymous pages? I must learn more mm
inards :>).

Nigel

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