Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] percpu: improve allocation success rate for non-GFP_KERNEL callers

From: Michal Hocko
Date: Mon Feb 27 2017 - 10:27:26 EST


On Mon 27-02-17 05:00:31, Tahsin Erdogan wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 1:52 AM, Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Sat 25-02-17 20:38:29, Tahsin Erdogan wrote:
> >> When pcpu_alloc() is called with gfp != GFP_KERNEL, the likelihood of
> >> a failure is higher than GFP_KERNEL case. This is mainly because
> >> pcpu_alloc() relies on previously allocated reserves and does not make
> >> an effort to add memory to its pools for non-GFP_KERNEL case.
> >
> > Who is going to use a different mask?
>
> blkg_create() makes a call with a non-GFP_KERNEL mask:
> new_blkg = blkg_alloc(blkcg, q, GFP_NOWAIT | __GFP_NOWARN);
>
> which turns into a call stack like below:
>
> __vmalloc+0x45/0x50
> pcpu_mem_zalloc+0x50/0x80
> pcpu_populate_chunk+0x3b/0x380
> pcpu_alloc+0x588/0x6e0
> __alloc_percpu_gfp+0xd/0x10
> __percpu_counter_init+0x55/0xc0
> blkg_alloc+0x76/0x230
> blkg_create+0x489/0x670
> blkg_lookup_create+0x9a/0x230
> generic_make_request_checks+0x7dd/0x890
> generic_make_request+0x1f/0x180
> submit_bio+0x61/0x120

OK, I see. Thanks for the clarification. I am not familiar with the pcp
allocator much, but we have
/*
* No space left. Create a new chunk. We don't want multiple
* tasks to create chunks simultaneously. Serialize and create iff
* there's still no empty chunk after grabbing the mutex.
*/
if (is_atomic)
goto fail;

right before pcpu_populate_chunk so is this actually a problem?

> > We already have __vmalloc_gfp, why this cannot be used? Also note that
> > vmalloc dosn't really support arbitrary gfp flags. One have to be really
> > careful because there are some internal allocations which are hardcoded
> > GFP_KERNEL. Also this patch doesn't really add any new callers so it is
> > hard to tell whether what you do actually makes sense and is correct.
>
> Did you mean to say __vmalloc? If so, yes, I should use that.

yeah

> By the way, I now noticed the might_sleep() in alloc_vmap_area() which makes
> it unsafe to call vmalloc* in GFP_ATOMIC contexts. It was added recently:

Do we call alloc_vmap_area from true atomic contexts (aka from under
spinlocks etc)? I thought this was a nogo and GFP_NOWAIT resp.
GFP_ATOMIC was more about optimistic request resp. access to memory
reserves rather than true atomicity requirements.

> commit 5803ed292e63 ("mm: mark all calls into the vmalloc subsystem as
> potentially sleeping")
>
> Any suggestions on how to deal with that? For instance, would it be
> safe to replace it with:
>
> might_sleep_if(gfpflags_allow_blocking(gfp_mask));
>
> and then skip purge_vmap_area_lazy() if blocking is not allowed?

--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs