Re: [PATCH 1/4] Properly account for the number of page cachepages zone_reclaim() can reclaim

[Mel Gorman]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 09:19:39AM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 01:01:41AM +0800, Mel Gorman wrote:
> > 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.
> > 
> > There is a heuristic that determines if the scan is worthwhile but the
> > problem is that the heuristic is not being properly applied and is basically
> > assuming zone_reclaim_mode is 1 if it is enabled.
> > 
> > Historically, once enabled it was depending on NR_FILE_PAGES which may
> > include swapcache pages that the reclaim_mode cannot deal with.  Patch
> > vmscan-change-the-number-of-the-unmapped-files-in-zone-reclaim.patch by
> > Kosaki Motohiro noted that zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_PAGES) included
> > pages that were not file-backed such as swapcache and made a calculation
> > based on the inactive, active and mapped files. This is far superior
> > when zone_reclaim==1 but if RECLAIM_SWAP is set, then NR_FILE_PAGES is a
> > reasonable starting figure.
> > 
> > This patch alters how zone_reclaim() works out how many pages it might be
> > able to reclaim given the current reclaim_mode. If RECLAIM_SWAP is set
> > in the reclaim_mode it will either consider NR_FILE_PAGES as potential
> > candidates or else use NR_{IN}ACTIVE}_PAGES-NR_FILE_MAPPED to discount
> > swapcache and other non-file-backed pages.  If RECLAIM_WRITE is not set,
> > then NR_FILE_DIRTY number of pages are not candidates. If RECLAIM_SWAP is
> > not set, then NR_FILE_MAPPED are not.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx>
> > Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> >  mm/vmscan.c |   52 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
> >  1 files changed, 38 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)
> > 
> > diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
> > index 2ddcfc8..2bfc76e 100644
> > --- a/mm/vmscan.c
> > +++ b/mm/vmscan.c
> > @@ -2333,6 +2333,41 @@ int sysctl_min_unmapped_ratio = 1;
> >   */
> >  int sysctl_min_slab_ratio = 5;
> >  
> > +static inline unsigned long zone_unmapped_file_pages(struct zone *zone)
> > +{
> > +	return zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_FILE) +
> > +		zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_FILE) -
> > +		zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_MAPPED);
> 
> This may underflow if too many tmpfs pages are mapped.
> 

You're right. This is also a bug now in mmotm for patch
vmscan-change-the-number-of-the-unmapped-files-in-zone-reclaim.patch which
is where I took this code out of and didn't think deeply enough about.
Well spotted.

Should this be something like?

static unsigned long zone_unmapped_file_pages(struct zone *zone)
{
	unsigned long file_mapped = zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_MAPPED);
	unsigned long file_lru = zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_FILE)
			zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_FILE);

	return (file_lru > file_mapped) ? (file_lru - file_mapped) : 0;
}

?

If that returns 0, it does mean that there are very few pages that the
current reclaim_mode is going to be able to deal with so even if the
count is not perfect, it should be good enough for what we need it for.

> > +}
> > +
> > +/* Work out how many page cache pages we can reclaim in this reclaim_mode */
> > +static inline long zone_pagecache_reclaimable(struct zone *zone)
> > +{
> > +	long nr_pagecache_reclaimable;
> > +	long delta = 0;
> > +
> > +	/*
> > +	 * If RECLAIM_SWAP is set, then all file pages are considered
> > +	 * potentially reclaimable. Otherwise, we have to worry about
> > +	 * pages like swapcache and zone_unmapped_file_pages() provides
> > +	 * a better estimate
> > +	 */
> > +	if (zone_reclaim_mode & RECLAIM_SWAP)
> > +		nr_pagecache_reclaimable = zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_PAGES);
> > +	else
> > +		nr_pagecache_reclaimable = zone_unmapped_file_pages(zone);
> > +
> > +	/* If we can't clean pages, remove dirty pages from consideration */
> > +	if (!(zone_reclaim_mode & RECLAIM_WRITE))
> > +		delta += zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_DIRTY);
> > +
> > +	/* Beware of double accounting */
> 
> The double accounting happens for NR_FILE_MAPPED but not
> NR_FILE_DIRTY(dirty tmpfs pages won't be accounted),

I should have taken that out. In an interim version, delta was altered
more than once in a way that could have caused underflow.

> so this comment
> is more suitable for zone_unmapped_file_pages(). But the double
> accounting does affects this abstraction. So a more reasonable
> sequence could be to first substract NR_FILE_DIRTY and then
> conditionally substract NR_FILE_MAPPED?

The end result is the same I believe and I prefer having the
zone_unmapped_file_pages() doing just that and nothing else because it's
in line with what zone_lru_pages() does.

> 
> Or better to introduce a new counter NR_TMPFS_MAPPED to fix this mess?
> 

I considered such a counter and dismissed it but maybe it merits wider discussion.

My problem with it is that it would affect the pagecache add/remove hot paths
and a few other sites and increase the amount of accouting we do within a
zone. It seemed unjustified to help a seldom executed slow path that only
runs on NUMA.

> > +	if (delta < nr_pagecache_reclaimable)
> > +		nr_pagecache_reclaimable -= delta;
> > +
> > +	return nr_pagecache_reclaimable;
> > +}
> > +
> >  /*
> >   * Try to free up some pages from this zone through reclaim.
> >   */
> > @@ -2355,7 +2390,6 @@ static int __zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
> >  		.isolate_pages = isolate_pages_global,
> >  	};
> >  	unsigned long slab_reclaimable;
> > -	long nr_unmapped_file_pages;
> >  
> >  	disable_swap_token();
> >  	cond_resched();
> > @@ -2368,11 +2402,7 @@ static int __zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
> >  	reclaim_state.reclaimed_slab = 0;
> >  	p->reclaim_state = &reclaim_state;
> >  
> > -	nr_unmapped_file_pages = zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_FILE) +
> > -				 zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_FILE) -
> > -				 zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_MAPPED);
> > -
> > -	if (nr_unmapped_file_pages > zone->min_unmapped_pages) {
> > +	if (zone_pagecache_reclaimable(zone) > zone->min_unmapped_pages) {
> >  		/*
> >  		 * Free memory by calling shrink zone with increasing
> >  		 * priorities until we have enough memory freed.
> > @@ -2419,8 +2449,6 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
> >  {
> >  	int node_id;
> >  	int ret;
> > -	long nr_unmapped_file_pages;
> > -	long nr_slab_reclaimable;
> >  
> >  	/*
> >  	 * Zone reclaim reclaims unmapped file backed pages and
> > @@ -2432,12 +2460,8 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
> >  	 * if less than a specified percentage of the zone is used by
> >  	 * unmapped file backed pages.
> >  	 */
> > -	nr_unmapped_file_pages = zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_FILE) +
> > -				 zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_FILE) -
> > -				 zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_MAPPED);
> > -	nr_slab_reclaimable = zone_page_state(zone, NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE);
> > -	if (nr_unmapped_file_pages <= zone->min_unmapped_pages &&
> > -	    nr_slab_reclaimable <= zone->min_slab_pages)
> > +	if (zone_pagecache_reclaimable(zone) <= zone->min_unmapped_pages &&
> > +	    zone_page_state(zone, NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE) <= zone->min_slab_pages)
> >  		return 0;
> >  
> >  	if (zone_is_all_unreclaimable(zone))
> > -- 
> > 1.5.6.5
> 

-- 
Mel Gorman
Part-time Phd Student                          Linux Technology Center
University of Limerick                         IBM Dublin Software Lab
--
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/