Re: [PATCH v2] mm/vmscan: fix high cpu usage of kswapd if there are no reclaimable pages

[Michal Hocko]

On Fri 24-02-17 11:51:05, Johannes Weiner wrote:
[...]
> >From 29fefdca148e28830e0934d4e6cceb95ed2ee36e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 10:56:32 -0500
> Subject: [PATCH] mm: vmscan: disable kswapd on unreclaimable nodes
> 
> Jia He reports a problem with kswapd spinning at 100% CPU when
> requesting more hugepages than memory available in the system:
> 
> $ echo 4000 >/proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
> 
> top - 13:42:59 up  3:37,  1 user,  load average: 1.09, 1.03, 1.01
> Tasks:   1 total,   1 running,   0 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> %Cpu(s):  0.0 us, 12.5 sy,  0.0 ni, 85.5 id,  2.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
> KiB Mem:  31371520 total, 30915136 used,   456384 free,      320 buffers
> KiB Swap:  6284224 total,   115712 used,  6168512 free.    48192 cached Mem
> 
>   PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
>    76 root      20   0       0      0      0 R 100.0 0.000 217:17.29 kswapd3
> 
> At that time, there are no reclaimable pages left in the node, but as
> kswapd fails to restore the high watermarks it refuses to go to sleep.
> 
> Kswapd needs to back away from nodes that fail to balance. Up until
> 1d82de618ddd ("mm, vmscan: make kswapd reclaim in terms of nodes")
> kswapd had such a mechanism. It considered zones whose theoretically
> reclaimable pages it had reclaimed six times over as unreclaimable and
> backed away from them. This guard was erroneously removed as the patch
> changed the definition of a balanced node.
> 
> However, simply restoring this code wouldn't help in the case reported
> here: there *are* no reclaimable pages that could be scanned until the
> threshold is met. Kswapd would stay awake anyway.
> 
> Introduce a new and much simpler way of backing off. If kswapd runs
> through MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES (16) cycles without reclaiming a single
> page, make it back off from the node. This is the same number of shots
> direct reclaim takes before declaring OOM. Kswapd will go to sleep on
> that node until a direct reclaimer manages to reclaim some pages, thus
> proving the node reclaimable again.

Yes this looks, nice&simple. I would just be worried about [1] a bit.
Maybe that is worth a separate patch though.

[1] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170223111609.hlncnvokhq3quxwz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 
> Reported-by: Jia He <hejianet@xxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>

I would have just one more suggestion. Please move MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES
to mm/internal.h. This is MM internal thing and there is no need to make
it visible.

> ---
>  include/linux/mmzone.h |  2 ++
>  include/linux/swap.h   |  1 +
>  mm/page_alloc.c        |  6 ------
>  mm/vmscan.c            | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
>  4 files changed, 23 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> index 8e02b3750fe0..d2c50ab6ae40 100644
> --- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
> +++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> @@ -630,6 +630,8 @@ typedef struct pglist_data {
>  	int kswapd_order;
>  	enum zone_type kswapd_classzone_idx;
>  
> +	int kswapd_failures;		/* Number of 'reclaimed == 0' runs */
> +
>  #ifdef CONFIG_COMPACTION
>  	int kcompactd_max_order;
>  	enum zone_type kcompactd_classzone_idx;
> diff --git a/include/linux/swap.h b/include/linux/swap.h
> index 45e91dd6716d..5c06581a730b 100644
> --- a/include/linux/swap.h
> +++ b/include/linux/swap.h
> @@ -288,6 +288,7 @@ extern void lru_cache_add_active_or_unevictable(struct page *page,
>  						struct vm_area_struct *vma);
>  
>  /* linux/mm/vmscan.c */
> +#define MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES 16
>  extern unsigned long zone_reclaimable_pages(struct zone *zone);
>  extern unsigned long pgdat_reclaimable_pages(struct pglist_data *pgdat);
>  extern unsigned long try_to_free_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist, int order,
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index 614cd0397ce3..83f0442f07fa 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -3516,12 +3516,6 @@ bool gfp_pfmemalloc_allowed(gfp_t gfp_mask)
>  }
>  
>  /*
> - * Maximum number of reclaim retries without any progress before OOM killer
> - * is consider as the only way to move forward.
> - */
> -#define MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES 16
> -
> -/*
>   * Checks whether it makes sense to retry the reclaim to make a forward progress
>   * for the given allocation request.
>   * The reclaim feedback represented by did_some_progress (any progress during
> diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
> index 26c3b405ef34..8e9bdd172182 100644
> --- a/mm/vmscan.c
> +++ b/mm/vmscan.c
> @@ -2626,6 +2626,15 @@ static bool shrink_node(pg_data_t *pgdat, struct scan_control *sc)
>  	} while (should_continue_reclaim(pgdat, sc->nr_reclaimed - nr_reclaimed,
>  					 sc->nr_scanned - nr_scanned, sc));
>  
> +	/*
> +	 * Kswapd gives up on balancing particular nodes after too
> +	 * many failures to reclaim anything from them. If reclaim
> +	 * progress happens, reset the failure counter. A successful
> +	 * direct reclaim run will knock a stuck kswapd loose again.
> +	 */
> +	if (reclaimable)
> +		pgdat->kswapd_failures = 0;
> +
>  	return reclaimable;
>  }
>  
> @@ -3134,6 +3143,10 @@ static bool prepare_kswapd_sleep(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int classzone_idx)
>  	if (waitqueue_active(&pgdat->pfmemalloc_wait))
>  		wake_up_all(&pgdat->pfmemalloc_wait);
>  
> +	/* Hopeless node, leave it to direct reclaim */
> +	if (pgdat->kswapd_failures >= MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES)
> +		return true;
> +
>  	for (i = 0; i <= classzone_idx; i++) {
>  		struct zone *zone = pgdat->node_zones + i;
>  
> @@ -3316,6 +3329,9 @@ static int balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int classzone_idx)
>  			sc.priority--;
>  	} while (sc.priority >= 1);
>  
> +	if (!sc.nr_reclaimed)
> +		pgdat->kswapd_failures++;
> +
>  out:
>  	/*
>  	 * Return the order kswapd stopped reclaiming at as
> @@ -3515,6 +3531,10 @@ void wakeup_kswapd(struct zone *zone, int order, enum zone_type classzone_idx)
>  	if (!waitqueue_active(&pgdat->kswapd_wait))
>  		return;
>  
> +	/* Hopeless node, leave it to direct reclaim */
> +	if (pgdat->kswapd_failures >= MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES)
> +		return;
> +
>  	/* Only wake kswapd if all zones are unbalanced */
>  	for (z = 0; z <= classzone_idx; z++) {
>  		zone = pgdat->node_zones + z;
> -- 
> 2.11.1

-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs