[PATCH 3.14 121/122] mm: vmscan: use proportional scanning during direct reclaim and full scan at DEF_PRIORITY

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman
Date: Wed Nov 19 2014 - 16:38:33 EST

3.14-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know.

------------------

From: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>

commit 1a501907bbea8e6ebb0b16cf6db9e9cbf1d2c813 upstream.

Commit "mm: vmscan: obey proportional scanning requirements for kswapd"
ensured that file/anon lists were scanned proportionally for reclaim from
kswapd but ignored it for direct reclaim. The intent was to minimse
direct reclaim latency but Yuanhan Liu pointer out that it substitutes one
long stall for many small stalls and distorts aging for normal workloads
like streaming readers/writers. Hugh Dickins pointed out that a
side-effect of the same commit was that when one LRU list dropped to zero
that the entirety of the other list was shrunk leading to excessive
reclaim in memcgs. This patch scans the file/anon lists proportionally
for direct reclaim to similarly age page whether reclaimed by kswapd or
direct reclaim but takes care to abort reclaim if one LRU drops to zero
after reclaiming the requested number of pages.

Based on ext4 and using the Intel VM scalability test

3.15.0-rc5 3.15.0-rc5
shrinker proportion
Unit lru-file-readonce elapsed 5.3500 ( 0.00%) 5.4200 ( -1.31%)
Unit lru-file-readonce time_range 0.2700 ( 0.00%) 0.1400 ( 48.15%)
Unit lru-file-readonce time_stddv 0.1148 ( 0.00%) 0.0536 ( 53.33%)
Unit lru-file-readtwice elapsed 8.1700 ( 0.00%) 8.1700 ( 0.00%)
Unit lru-file-readtwice time_range 0.4300 ( 0.00%) 0.2300 ( 46.51%)
Unit lru-file-readtwice time_stddv 0.1650 ( 0.00%) 0.0971 ( 41.16%)

The test cases are running multiple dd instances reading sparse files. The results are within
the noise for the small test machine. The impact of the patch is more noticable from the vmstats

3.15.0-rc5 3.15.0-rc5
shrinker proportion
Minor Faults 35154 36784
Major Faults 611 1305
Swap Ins 394 1651
Swap Outs 4394 5891
Allocation stalls 118616 44781
Direct pages scanned 4935171 4602313
Kswapd pages scanned 15921292 16258483
Kswapd pages reclaimed 15913301 16248305
Direct pages reclaimed 4933368 4601133
Kswapd efficiency 99% 99%
Kswapd velocity 670088.047 682555.961
Direct efficiency 99% 99%
Direct velocity 207709.217 193212.133
Percentage direct scans 23% 22%
Page writes by reclaim 4858.000 6232.000
Page writes file 464 341
Page writes anon 4394 5891

Note that there are fewer allocation stalls even though the amount
of direct reclaim scanning is very approximately the same.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Tested-by: Yuanhan Liu <yuanhan.liu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Bob Liu <bob.liu@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

---
mm/vmscan.c | 36 +++++++++++++++++++++++++-----------
1 file changed, 25 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -2018,13 +2018,27 @@ static void shrink_lruvec(struct lruvec
unsigned long nr_reclaimed = 0;
unsigned long nr_to_reclaim = sc->nr_to_reclaim;
struct blk_plug plug;
- bool scan_adjusted = false;
+ bool scan_adjusted;

get_scan_count(lruvec, sc, nr);

/* Record the original scan target for proportional adjustments later */
memcpy(targets, nr, sizeof(nr));

+ /*
+ * Global reclaiming within direct reclaim at DEF_PRIORITY is a normal
+ * event that can occur when there is little memory pressure e.g.
+ * multiple streaming readers/writers. Hence, we do not abort scanning
+ * when the requested number of pages are reclaimed when scanning at
+ * DEF_PRIORITY on the assumption that the fact we are direct
+ * reclaiming implies that kswapd is not keeping up and it is best to
+ * do a batch of work at once. For memcg reclaim one check is made to
+ * abort proportional reclaim if either the file or anon lru has already
+ * dropped to zero at the first pass.
+ */
+ scan_adjusted = (global_reclaim(sc) && !current_is_kswapd() &&
+ sc->priority == DEF_PRIORITY);
+
blk_start_plug(&plug);
while (nr[LRU_INACTIVE_ANON] || nr[LRU_ACTIVE_FILE] ||
nr[LRU_INACTIVE_FILE]) {
@@ -2045,17 +2059,8 @@ static void shrink_lruvec(struct lruvec
continue;

/*
- * For global direct reclaim, reclaim only the number of pages
- * requested. Less care is taken to scan proportionally as it
- * is more important to minimise direct reclaim stall latency
- * than it is to properly age the LRU lists.
- */
- if (global_reclaim(sc) && !current_is_kswapd())
- break;
-
- /*
* For kswapd and memcg, reclaim at least the number of pages
- * requested. Ensure that the anon and file LRUs shrink
+ * requested. Ensure that the anon and file LRUs are scanned
* proportionally what was requested by get_scan_count(). We
* stop reclaiming one LRU and reduce the amount scanning
* proportional to the original scan target.
@@ -2063,6 +2068,15 @@ static void shrink_lruvec(struct lruvec
nr_file = nr[LRU_INACTIVE_FILE] + nr[LRU_ACTIVE_FILE];
nr_anon = nr[LRU_INACTIVE_ANON] + nr[LRU_ACTIVE_ANON];

+ /*
+ * It's just vindictive to attack the larger once the smaller
+ * has gone to zero. And given the way we stop scanning the
+ * smaller below, this makes sure that we only make one nudge
+ * towards proportionality once we've got nr_to_reclaim.
+ */
+ if (!nr_file || !nr_anon)
+ break;
+
if (nr_file > nr_anon) {
unsigned long scan_target = targets[LRU_INACTIVE_ANON] +
targets[LRU_ACTIVE_ANON] + 1;


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