[PATCH] memcg: fix dirty page migration

From: Greg Thelen
Date: Sat Sep 19 2015 - 19:21:18 EST


The problem starts with a file backed dirty page which is charged to a
memcg. Then page migration is used to move oldpage to newpage.
Migration:
- copies the oldpage's data to newpage
- clears oldpage.PG_dirty
- sets newpage.PG_dirty
- uncharges oldpage from memcg
- charges newpage to memcg

Clearing oldpage.PG_dirty decrements the charged memcg's dirty page
count. However, because newpage is not yet charged, setting
newpage.PG_dirty does not increment the memcg's dirty page count. After
migration completes newpage.PG_dirty is eventually cleared, often in
account_page_cleaned(). At this time newpage is charged to a memcg so
the memcg's dirty page count is decremented which causes underflow
because the count was not previously incremented by migration. This
underflow causes balance_dirty_pages() to see a very large unsigned
number of dirty memcg pages which leads to aggressive throttling of
buffered writes by processes in non root memcg.

This issue:
- can harm performance of non root memcg buffered writes.
- can report too small (even negative) values in
memory.stat[(total_)dirty] counters of all memcg, including the root.

To avoid polluting migrate.c with #ifdef CONFIG_MEMCG checks, introduce
page_memcg() and set_page_memcg() helpers.

Test:
0) setup and enter limited memcg
mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/test
echo 1G > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/memory.limit_in_bytes
echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/cgroup.procs

1) buffered writes baseline
dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/tmp/foo bs=1M count=1k
sync
grep ^dirty /sys/fs/cgroup/test/memory.stat

2) buffered writes with compaction antagonist to induce migration
yes 1 > /proc/sys/vm/compact_memory &
rm -rf /data/tmp/foo
dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/tmp/foo bs=1M count=1k
kill %
sync
grep ^dirty /sys/fs/cgroup/test/memory.stat

3) buffered writes without antagonist, should match baseline
rm -rf /data/tmp/foo
dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/tmp/foo bs=1M count=1k
sync
grep ^dirty /sys/fs/cgroup/test/memory.stat

(speed, dirty residue)
unpatched patched
1) 841 MB/s 0 dirty pages 886 MB/s 0 dirty pages
2) 611 MB/s -33427456 dirty pages 793 MB/s 0 dirty pages
3) 114 MB/s -33427456 dirty pages 891 MB/s 0 dirty pages

Notice that unpatched baseline performance (1) fell after
migration (3): 841 -> 114 MB/s. In the patched kernel, post
migration performance matches baseline.

Fixes: c4843a7593a9 ("memcg: add per cgroup dirty page accounting")
Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> # 4.2+
Reported-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Greg Thelen <gthelen@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
include/linux/mm.h | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
mm/migrate.c | 12 +++++++++++-
2 files changed, 32 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/mm.h b/include/linux/mm.h
index 91c08f6f0dc9..80001de019ba 100644
--- a/include/linux/mm.h
+++ b/include/linux/mm.h
@@ -905,6 +905,27 @@ static inline void set_page_links(struct page *page, enum zone_type zone,
#endif
}

+#ifdef CONFIG_MEMCG
+static inline struct mem_cgroup *page_memcg(struct page *page)
+{
+ return page->mem_cgroup;
+}
+
+static inline void set_page_memcg(struct page *page, struct mem_cgroup *memcg)
+{
+ page->mem_cgroup = memcg;
+}
+#else
+static inline struct mem_cgroup *page_memcg(struct page *page)
+{
+ return NULL;
+}
+
+static inline void set_page_memcg(struct page *page, struct mem_cgroup *memcg)
+{
+}
+#endif
+
/*
* Some inline functions in vmstat.h depend on page_zone()
*/
diff --git a/mm/migrate.c b/mm/migrate.c
index c3cb566af3e2..6116b8f64d27 100644
--- a/mm/migrate.c
+++ b/mm/migrate.c
@@ -740,6 +740,15 @@ static int move_to_new_page(struct page *newpage, struct page *page,
if (PageSwapBacked(page))
SetPageSwapBacked(newpage);

+ /*
+ * Indirectly called below, migrate_page_copy() copies PG_dirty and thus
+ * needs newpage's memcg set to transfer memcg dirty page accounting.
+ * So perform memcg migration in two steps:
+ * 1. set newpage->mem_cgroup (here)
+ * 2. clear page->mem_cgroup (below)
+ */
+ set_page_memcg(newpage, page_memcg(page));
+
mapping = page_mapping(page);
if (!mapping)
rc = migrate_page(mapping, newpage, page, mode);
@@ -756,9 +765,10 @@ static int move_to_new_page(struct page *newpage, struct page *page,
rc = fallback_migrate_page(mapping, newpage, page, mode);

if (rc != MIGRATEPAGE_SUCCESS) {
+ set_page_memcg(newpage, NULL);
newpage->mapping = NULL;
} else {
- mem_cgroup_migrate(page, newpage, false);
+ set_page_memcg(page, NULL);
if (page_was_mapped)
remove_migration_ptes(page, newpage);
page->mapping = NULL;
--
2.6.0.rc0.131.gf624c3d

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