Re: [PATCH v5 02/14] mm, compaction: defer each zone individually instead of preferred zone

[Joonsoo Kim]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 03:11:29PM +0200, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> When direct sync compaction is often unsuccessful, it may become deferred for
> some time to avoid further useless attempts, both sync and async. Successful
> high-order allocations un-defer compaction, while further unsuccessful
> compaction attempts prolong the copmaction deferred period.
> 
> Currently the checking and setting deferred status is performed only on the
> preferred zone of the allocation that invoked direct compaction. But compaction
> itself is attempted on all eligible zones in the zonelist, so the behavior is
> suboptimal and may lead both to scenarios where 1) compaction is attempted
> uselessly, or 2) where it's not attempted despite good chances of succeeding,
> as shown on the examples below:
> 
> 1) A direct compaction with Normal preferred zone failed and set deferred
>    compaction for the Normal zone. Another unrelated direct compaction with
>    DMA32 as preferred zone will attempt to compact DMA32 zone even though
>    the first compaction attempt also included DMA32 zone.
> 
>    In another scenario, compaction with Normal preferred zone failed to compact
>    Normal zone, but succeeded in the DMA32 zone, so it will not defer
>    compaction. In the next attempt, it will try Normal zone which will fail
>    again, instead of skipping Normal zone and trying DMA32 directly.
> 
> 2) Kswapd will balance DMA32 zone and reset defer status based on watermarks
>    looking good. A direct compaction with preferred Normal zone will skip
>    compaction of all zones including DMA32 because Normal was still deferred.
>    The allocation might have succeeded in DMA32, but won't.
> 
> This patch makes compaction deferring work on individual zone basis instead of
> preferred zone. For each zone, it checks compaction_deferred() to decide if the
> zone should be skipped. If watermarks fail after compacting the zone,
> defer_compaction() is called. The zone where watermarks passed can still be
> deferred when the allocation attempt is unsuccessful. When allocation is
> successful, compaction_defer_reset() is called for the zone containing the
> allocated page. This approach should approximate calling defer_compaction()
> only on zones where compaction was attempted and did not yield allocated page.
> There might be corner cases but that is inevitable as long as the decision
> to stop compacting dues not guarantee that a page will be allocated.
> 
> During testing on a two-node machine with a single very small Normal zone on
> node 1, this patch has improved success rates in stress-highalloc mmtests
> benchmark. The success here were previously made worse by commit 3a025760fc15
> ("mm: page_alloc: spill to remote nodes before waking kswapd") as kswapd was
> no longer resetting often enough the deferred compaction for the Normal zone,
> and DMA32 zones on both nodes were thus not considered for compaction.
> On different machine, success rates were improved with __GFP_NO_KSWAPD
> allocations.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Reviewed-by: Zhang Yanfei <zhangyanfei@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Michal Nazarewicz <mina86@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Naoya Horiguchi <n-horiguchi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  include/linux/compaction.h | 16 ++++++++++------
>  mm/compaction.c            | 30 ++++++++++++++++++++++++------
>  mm/page_alloc.c            | 39 +++++++++++++++++++++++----------------
>  3 files changed, 57 insertions(+), 28 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/compaction.h b/include/linux/compaction.h
> index 01e3132..b2e4c92 100644
> --- a/include/linux/compaction.h
> +++ b/include/linux/compaction.h
> @@ -2,14 +2,16 @@
>  #define _LINUX_COMPACTION_H
>  
>  /* Return values for compact_zone() and try_to_compact_pages() */
> +/* compaction didn't start as it was deferred due to past failures */
> +#define COMPACT_DEFERRED	0
>  /* compaction didn't start as it was not possible or direct reclaim was more suitable */
> -#define COMPACT_SKIPPED		0
> +#define COMPACT_SKIPPED		1

Hello,

This change makes some users of compaction_suitable() failed
unintentionally, because they assume that COMPACT_SKIPPED is 0.
Please fix them according to this change.

>  /* compaction should continue to another pageblock */
> -#define COMPACT_CONTINUE	1
> +#define COMPACT_CONTINUE	2
>  /* direct compaction partially compacted a zone and there are suitable pages */
> -#define COMPACT_PARTIAL		2
> +#define COMPACT_PARTIAL		3
>  /* The full zone was compacted */
> -#define COMPACT_COMPLETE	3
> +#define COMPACT_COMPLETE	4
>  
>  #ifdef CONFIG_COMPACTION
>  extern int sysctl_compact_memory;
> @@ -22,7 +24,8 @@ extern int sysctl_extfrag_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
>  extern int fragmentation_index(struct zone *zone, unsigned int order);
>  extern unsigned long try_to_compact_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist,
>  			int order, gfp_t gfp_mask, nodemask_t *mask,
> -			enum migrate_mode mode, bool *contended);
> +			enum migrate_mode mode, bool *contended,
> +			struct zone **candidate_zone);
>  extern void compact_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order);
>  extern void reset_isolation_suitable(pg_data_t *pgdat);
>  extern unsigned long compaction_suitable(struct zone *zone, int order);
> @@ -91,7 +94,8 @@ static inline bool compaction_restarting(struct zone *zone, int order)
>  #else
>  static inline unsigned long try_to_compact_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist,
>  			int order, gfp_t gfp_mask, nodemask_t *nodemask,
> -			enum migrate_mode mode, bool *contended)
> +			enum migrate_mode mode, bool *contended,
> +			struct zone **candidate_zone)
>  {
>  	return COMPACT_CONTINUE;
>  }
> diff --git a/mm/compaction.c b/mm/compaction.c
> index 5175019..f3ae2ec 100644
> --- a/mm/compaction.c
> +++ b/mm/compaction.c
> @@ -1122,28 +1122,27 @@ int sysctl_extfrag_threshold = 500;
>   * @nodemask: The allowed nodes to allocate from
>   * @mode: The migration mode for async, sync light, or sync migration
>   * @contended: Return value that is true if compaction was aborted due to lock contention
> - * @page: Optionally capture a free page of the requested order during compaction
> + * @candidate_zone: Return the zone where we think allocation should succeed
>   *
>   * This is the main entry point for direct page compaction.
>   */
>  unsigned long try_to_compact_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist,
>  			int order, gfp_t gfp_mask, nodemask_t *nodemask,
> -			enum migrate_mode mode, bool *contended)
> +			enum migrate_mode mode, bool *contended,
> +			struct zone **candidate_zone)
>  {
>  	enum zone_type high_zoneidx = gfp_zone(gfp_mask);
>  	int may_enter_fs = gfp_mask & __GFP_FS;
>  	int may_perform_io = gfp_mask & __GFP_IO;
>  	struct zoneref *z;
>  	struct zone *zone;
> -	int rc = COMPACT_SKIPPED;
> +	int rc = COMPACT_DEFERRED;
>  	int alloc_flags = 0;
>  
>  	/* Check if the GFP flags allow compaction */
>  	if (!order || !may_enter_fs || !may_perform_io)
>  		return rc;
>  
> -	count_compact_event(COMPACTSTALL);
> -
>  #ifdef CONFIG_CMA
>  	if (allocflags_to_migratetype(gfp_mask) == MIGRATE_MOVABLE)
>  		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_CMA;
> @@ -1153,14 +1152,33 @@ unsigned long try_to_compact_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist,
>  								nodemask) {
>  		int status;
>  
> +		if (compaction_deferred(zone, order))
> +			continue;
> +
>  		status = compact_zone_order(zone, order, gfp_mask, mode,
>  						contended);
>  		rc = max(status, rc);
>  
>  		/* If a normal allocation would succeed, stop compacting */
>  		if (zone_watermark_ok(zone, order, low_wmark_pages(zone), 0,
> -				      alloc_flags))
> +				      alloc_flags)) {
> +			*candidate_zone = zone;
> +			/*
> +			 * We think the allocation will succeed in this zone,
> +			 * but it is not certain, hence the false. The caller
> +			 * will repeat this with true if allocation indeed
> +			 * succeeds in this zone.
> +			 */
> +			compaction_defer_reset(zone, order, false);
>  			break;
> +		} else if (mode != MIGRATE_ASYNC) {
> +			/*
> +			 * We think that allocation won't succeed in this zone
> +			 * so we defer compaction there. If it ends up
> +			 * succeeding after all, it will be reset.
> +			 */
> +			defer_compaction(zone, order);
> +		}
>  	}
>  
>  	return rc;
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index b99643d4..a14efeb 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -2299,21 +2299,24 @@ __alloc_pages_direct_compact(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
>  	bool *contended_compaction, bool *deferred_compaction,
>  	unsigned long *did_some_progress)
>  {
> -	if (!order)
> -		return NULL;
> +	struct zone *last_compact_zone = NULL;
>  
> -	if (compaction_deferred(preferred_zone, order)) {
> -		*deferred_compaction = true;
> +	if (!order)
>  		return NULL;
> -	}
>  
>  	current->flags |= PF_MEMALLOC;
>  	*did_some_progress = try_to_compact_pages(zonelist, order, gfp_mask,
>  						nodemask, mode,
> -						contended_compaction);
> +						contended_compaction,
> +						&last_compact_zone);
>  	current->flags &= ~PF_MEMALLOC;
>  
> -	if (*did_some_progress != COMPACT_SKIPPED) {
> +	if (*did_some_progress > COMPACT_DEFERRED)
> +		count_vm_event(COMPACTSTALL);
> +	else
> +		*deferred_compaction = true;
> +
> +	if (*did_some_progress > COMPACT_SKIPPED) {
>  		struct page *page;
>  
>  		/* Page migration frees to the PCP lists but we want merging */
> @@ -2324,27 +2327,31 @@ __alloc_pages_direct_compact(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
>  				order, zonelist, high_zoneidx,
>  				alloc_flags & ~ALLOC_NO_WATERMARKS,
>  				preferred_zone, classzone_idx, migratetype);
> +
>  		if (page) {
> -			preferred_zone->compact_blockskip_flush = false;
> -			compaction_defer_reset(preferred_zone, order, true);
> +			struct zone *zone = page_zone(page);
> +
> +			zone->compact_blockskip_flush = false;
> +			compaction_defer_reset(zone, order, true);
>  			count_vm_event(COMPACTSUCCESS);
>  			return page;
>  		}
>  
>  		/*
> +		 * last_compact_zone is where try_to_compact_pages thought
> +		 * allocation should succeed, so it did not defer compaction.
> +		 * But now we know that it didn't succeed, so we do the defer.
> +		 */
> +		if (last_compact_zone && mode != MIGRATE_ASYNC)
> +			defer_compaction(last_compact_zone, order);

I still don't understand why defer_compaction() is needed here.
defer_compaction() is intended for not struggling doing compaction on
the zone where we already have tried compaction and found that it
isn't suitable for compaction. Allocation failure doesn't tell us
that we have tried compaction for all the zone range so we shouldn't
make a decision here to defer compaction on this zone carelessly.

Thanks.
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