Re: [PATCH] vmscan: scan pages until it founds eligible pages

[Minchan Kim]

On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 05:14:36PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Tue 02-05-17 23:51:50, Minchan Kim wrote:
> > Hi Michal,
> > 
> > On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 09:54:32AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > On Tue 02-05-17 14:14:52, Minchan Kim wrote:
> > > > Oops, forgot to add lkml and linux-mm.
> > > > Sorry for that.
> > > > Send it again.
> > > > 
> > > > >From 8ddf1c8aa15baf085bc6e8c62ce705459d57ea4c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> > > > From: Minchan Kim <minchan@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 12:34:05 +0900
> > > > Subject: [PATCH] vmscan: scan pages until it founds eligible pages
> > > > 
> > > > On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 01:40:38PM +0900, Minchan Kim wrote:
> > > > There are premature OOM happening. Although there are a ton of free
> > > > swap and anonymous LRU list of elgible zones, OOM happened.
> > > > 
> > > > With investigation, skipping page of isolate_lru_pages makes reclaim
> > > > void because it returns zero nr_taken easily so LRU shrinking is
> > > > effectively nothing and just increases priority aggressively.
> > > > Finally, OOM happens.
> > > 
> > > I am not really sure I understand the problem you are facing. Could you
> > > be more specific please? What is your configuration etc...
> > 
> > Sure, KVM guest on x86_64, It has 2G memory and 1G swap and configured
> > movablecore=1G to simulate highmem zone.
> > Workload is a process consumes 2.2G memory and then random touch the
> > address space so it makes lots of swap in/out.
> > 
> > > 
> > > > balloon invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x17080c0(GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT|__GFP_ZERO|__GFP_NOTRACK), nodemask=(null),  order=0, oom_score_adj=0
> > > [...]
> > > > Node 0 active_anon:1698864kB inactive_anon:261256kB active_file:208kB inactive_file:184kB unevictable:0kB isolated(anon):0kB isolated(file):0kB mapped:532kB dirty:108kB writeback:0kB shmem:172kB writeback_tmp:0kB unstable:0kB all_unreclaimable? no
> > > > DMA free:7316kB min:32kB low:44kB high:56kB active_anon:8064kB inactive_anon:0kB active_file:0kB inactive_file:0kB unevictable:0kB writepending:0kB present:15992kB managed:15908kB mlocked:0kB slab_reclaimable:464kB slab_unreclaimable:40kB kernel_stack:0kB pagetables:24kB bounce:0kB free_pcp:0kB local_pcp:0kB free_cma:0kB
> > > > lowmem_reserve[]: 0 992 992 1952
> > > > DMA32 free:9088kB min:2048kB low:3064kB high:4080kB active_anon:952176kB inactive_anon:0kB active_file:36kB inactive_file:0kB unevictable:0kB writepending:88kB present:1032192kB managed:1019388kB mlocked:0kB slab_reclaimable:13532kB slab_unreclaimable:16460kB kernel_stack:3552kB pagetables:6672kB bounce:0kB free_pcp:56kB local_pcp:24kB free_cma:0kB
> > > > lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 0 959
> > > 
> > > Hmm DMA32 has sufficient free memory to allow this order-0 request.
> > > Inactive anon lru is basically empty. Why do not we rotate a really
> > > large active anon list? Isn't this the primary problem?
> > 
> > It's a side effect by skipping page logic in isolate_lru_pages
> > I mentioned above in changelog.
> > 
> > The problem is a lot of anonymous memory in movable zone(ie, highmem)
> > and non-small memory in DMA32 zone.
> 
> Such a configuration is questionable on its own. But let't keep this
> part alone.

It seems you are misunderstood. It's really common on 32bit.
Think of 2G DRAM system on 32bit. Normally, it's 1G normal:1G highmem.
It's almost same with one I configured.

> 
> > In heavy memory pressure,
> > requesting a page in GFP_KERNEL triggers reclaim. VM knows inactive list
> > is low so it tries to deactivate pages. For it, first of all, it tries
> > to isolate pages from active list but there are lots of anonymous pages
> > from movable zone so skipping logic in isolate_lru_pages works. With
> > the result, isolate_lru_pages cannot isolate any eligible pages so
> > reclaim trial is effectively void. It continues to meet OOM.
> 
> But skipped pages should be rotated and we should eventually hit pages
> from the right zone(s). Moreover we should scan the full LRU at priority
> 0 so why exactly we hit the OOM killer?

Yes, full scan in priority 0 but keep it in mind that the number of full
LRU pages to scan is one of eligible pages, not all pages of the node.
And isolate_lru_pages have accounted skipped pages as scan count so that
VM cannot isolate any pages of eligible pages in LRU if non-eligible pages
are a lot in the LRU.

> 
> Anyway [1] has changed this behavior. Are you seeing the issue with this
> patch dropped?

Good point. Before the patch, it didn't increase scan count with skipped
pages so with reverting [1], I guess it might work but worry about
isolating lots of skipped pages into temporal pages_skipped list which
might causes premate OOM. Anyway, I will test it when I returns at
office after vacation.

Thanks.

> 
> [1] http://www.ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/revert-mm-vmscan-account-for-skipped-pages-as-a-partial-scan.patch
> -- 
> Michal Hocko
> SUSE Labs