Re: MIPS: BUG() in isolate_lru_pages in mm/vmscan.c?

From: Joshua Kinard
Date: Sat Apr 25 2015 - 14:56:22 EST


On 04/25/2015 11:56, Joshua Kinard wrote:
> I keep tripping up a BUG() in isolate_lru_pages in mm/vmscan.c:1345:
>
> switch (__isolate_lru_page(page, mode)) {
> case 0:
> nr_pages = hpage_nr_pages(page);
> mem_cgroup_update_lru_size(lruvec, lru, -nr_pages);
> list_move(&page->lru, dst);
> nr_taken += nr_pages;
> break;
>
> case -EBUSY:
> /* else it is being freed elsewhere */
> list_move(&page->lru, src);
> continue;
>
> default:
> BUG();
> }
>
> This is on an SGI Onyx2 platform (MIPS, IP27), two node boards (4x R14000
> CPUs), and 8G of RAM. The problem appears tied to heavy disk I/O, typically
> writes. I can reproduce sometimes with a long bonnie++ run, but I haven't
> gotten a recent panic() message under 4.0 yet. Most of the time, it silently
> hardlocks. I only have serial console access at 9600bps, so it may lock too
> fast before the serial driver can dump the panic.
>
> Is there any information behind the purpose or triggers of this BUG()? I went
> back in git all the way to the initial 2006 commit that added this function,
> but could not find any comments or explanation of just what it's protecting
> against. That makes it hard to know where to start debugging.
>
> I've already tried switching filesystems, first ext4, now XFS. Enabling
> CONFIG_NUMA seems to make it harder to trigger, but that's not an objective
> observation. An md RAID resync doesn't appear to trigger it either.


This patch seems to explain things a little bit (from 20070316):
http://marc.info/?l=linux-mm-commits&m=117401513810763&w=2

> Subject: lumpy: back out removal of active check in isolate_lru_pages
> From: Andy Whitcroft <apw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> As pointed out by Christop Lameter it should not be possible for a page to
> change its active/inactive state without taking the lru_lock. Reinstate this
> safety net.
>
> Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>
> mm/vmscan.c | 7 +++++--
> 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff -puN mm/vmscan.c~lumpy-back-out-removal-of-active-check-in-isolate_lru_pages mm/vmscan.c
> --- a/mm/vmscan.c~lumpy-back-out-removal-of-active-check-in-isolate_lru_pages
> +++ a/mm/vmscan.c
> @@ -686,10 +686,13 @@ static unsigned long isolate_lru_pages(u
> nr_taken++;
> break;
>
> - default:
> - /* page is being freed, or is a missmatch */
> + case -EBUSY:
> + /* else it is being freed elsewhere */
> list_move(&page->lru, src);
> continue;
> +
> + default:
> + BUG();
> }
>
> if (!order)

So if my reading is correct, the BUG() is being triggered because a page might
be changing its active/inactive state w/o taking the lru_lock. Given that the
SGI IP27 platform is an early NUMA machine and nodes can have a bit of physical
distance between them (thus some latency), could this be a sign of some kind of
SMP race condition specific to this platform?

--J
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