[PATCH] mm: vmscan: Check for fatal signals iff the process wasthrottled

[Mel Gorman]

commit 5515061d22f0 ("mm: throttle direct reclaimers if PF_MEMALLOC reserves
are low and swap is backed by network storage") introduced a check for
fatal signals after a process gets throttled for network storage. The
intention was that if a process was throttled and got killed that it
should not trigger the OOM killer. As pointed out by Minchan Kim and
David Rientjes, this check is in the wrong place and too broad. If a
system is in am OOM situation and a process is exiting, it can loop in
__alloc_pages_slowpath() and calling direct reclaim in a loop. As the
fatal signal is pending it returns 1 as if it is making forward progress
and can effectively deadlock.

This patch moves the fatal_signal_pending() check after throttling to
throttle_direct_reclaim() where it belongs. If the process is killed
while throttled, it will return immediately without direct reclaim
except now it will have TIF_MEMDIE set and will use the PFMEMALLOC
reserves.

Minchan pointed out that it may be better to direct reclaim before returning
to avoid using the reserves because there may be pages that can easily
reclaim that would avoid using the reserves. However, we do no such targetted
reclaim and there is no guarantee that suitable pages are available. As it
is expected that this throttling happens when swap-over-NFS is used there
is a possibility that the process will instead swap which may allocate
network buffers from the PFMEMALLOC reserves. Hence, in the swap-over-nfs
case where a process can be throtted and be killed it can use the reserves
to exit or it can potentially use reserves to swap a few pages and then
exit. This patch takes the option of using the reserves if necessary to
allow the process exit quickly.

If this patch passes review it should be considered a -stable candidate
for 3.6.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>
---
 mm/vmscan.c |   37 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------
 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index 48550c6..cbf84e1 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -2207,9 +2207,12 @@ static bool pfmemalloc_watermark_ok(pg_data_t *pgdat)
  * Throttle direct reclaimers if backing storage is backed by the network
  * and the PFMEMALLOC reserve for the preferred node is getting dangerously
  * depleted. kswapd will continue to make progress and wake the processes
- * when the low watermark is reached
+ * when the low watermark is reached.
+ *
+ * Returns true if a fatal signal was delivered during throttling. If this
+ * happens, the page allocator should not consider triggering the OOM killer.
  */
-static void throttle_direct_reclaim(gfp_t gfp_mask, struct zonelist *zonelist,
+static bool throttle_direct_reclaim(gfp_t gfp_mask, struct zonelist *zonelist,
 					nodemask_t *nodemask)
 {
 	struct zone *zone;
@@ -2224,13 +2227,20 @@ static void throttle_direct_reclaim(gfp_t gfp_mask, struct zonelist *zonelist,
 	 * processes to block on log_wait_commit().
 	 */
 	if (current->flags & PF_KTHREAD)
-		return;
+		goto out;
+
+	/*
+	 * If a fatal signal is pending, this process should not throttle.
+	 * It should return quickly so it can exit and free its memory
+	 */
+	if (fatal_signal_pending(current))
+		goto out;
 
 	/* Check if the pfmemalloc reserves are ok */
 	first_zones_zonelist(zonelist, high_zoneidx, NULL, &zone);
 	pgdat = zone->zone_pgdat;
 	if (pfmemalloc_watermark_ok(pgdat))
-		return;
+		goto out;
 
 	/* Account for the throttling */
 	count_vm_event(PGSCAN_DIRECT_THROTTLE);
@@ -2246,12 +2256,20 @@ static void throttle_direct_reclaim(gfp_t gfp_mask, struct zonelist *zonelist,
 	if (!(gfp_mask & __GFP_FS)) {
 		wait_event_interruptible_timeout(pgdat->pfmemalloc_wait,
 			pfmemalloc_watermark_ok(pgdat), HZ);
-		return;
+
+		goto check_pending;
 	}
 
 	/* Throttle until kswapd wakes the process */
 	wait_event_killable(zone->zone_pgdat->pfmemalloc_wait,
 		pfmemalloc_watermark_ok(pgdat));
+
+check_pending:
+	if (fatal_signal_pending(current))
+		return true;
+
+out:
+	return false;
 }
 
 unsigned long try_to_free_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist, int order,
@@ -2273,13 +2291,12 @@ unsigned long try_to_free_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist, int order,
 		.gfp_mask = sc.gfp_mask,
 	};
 
-	throttle_direct_reclaim(gfp_mask, zonelist, nodemask);
-
 	/*
-	 * Do not enter reclaim if fatal signal is pending. 1 is returned so
-	 * that the page allocator does not consider triggering OOM
+	 * Do not enter reclaim if fatal signal was delivered while throttled.
+	 * 1 is returned so that the page allocator does not OOM kill at this
+	 * point.
 	 */
-	if (fatal_signal_pending(current))
+	if (throttle_direct_reclaim(gfp_mask, zonelist, nodemask))
 		return 1;
 
 	trace_mm_vmscan_direct_reclaim_begin(order,
--
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