Re: [PATCH 03/10] mm: Assign memcg-aware shrinkers bitmap to memcg

[Kirill Tkhai]

On 21.03.2018 19:20, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 06:43:01PM +0300, Kirill Tkhai wrote:
>> On 21.03.2018 18:26, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
>>> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 06:12:17PM +0300, Kirill Tkhai wrote:
>>>> On 21.03.2018 17:56, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
>>>>> Why use your own bitmap here?  Why not use an IDA which can grow and
>>>>> shrink automatically without you needing to play fun games with RCU?
>>>>
>>>> Bitmap allows to use unlocked set_bit()/clear_bit() to maintain the map
>>>> of not empty shrinkers.
>>>>
>>>> So, the reason to use IDR here is to save bitmap memory? Does this mean
>>>> IDA works fast with sparse identifiers? It seems they require per-memcg
>>>> lock to call IDR primitives. I just don't have information about this.
>>>>
>>>> If so, which IDA primitive can be used to set particular id in bitmap?
>>>> There is idr_alloc_cyclic(idr, NULL, id, id+1, GFP_KERNEL) only I see
>>>> to do that.
>>>
>>> You're confusing IDR and IDA in your email, which is unfortunate.
>>>
>>> You can set a bit in an IDA by calling ida_simple_get(ida, n, n, GFP_FOO);
>>> You clear it by calling ida_simple_remove(ida, n);
>>
>> I moved to IDR in the message, since IDA uses global spinlock. It will be
>> taken every time a first object is added to list_lru, or last is removed.
>> These may be frequently called operations, and they may scale not good
>> on big machines.
> 
> I'm fixing the global spinlock issue with the IDA.  Not going to be ready
> for 4.17, but hopefully for 4.18.

It will be nice to see that in kernel.

>> Using IDR will allow us to introduce memcg-related locks, but I'm still not
>> sure it's easy to introduce them in scalable-way. Simple set_bit()/clear_bit()
>> do not require locks at all.
> 
> They're locked operations ... they may not have an explicit spinlock
> associated with them, but the locking still happens.

Yes, they are not ideal in this way.

>>> The identifiers aren't going to be all that sparse; after all you're
>>> allocating them from a global IDA.  Up to 62 identifiers will allocate
>>> no memory; 63-1024 identifiers will allocate a single 128 byte chunk.
>>> Between 1025 and 65536 identifiers, you'll allocate a 576-byte chunk
>>> and then 128-byte chunks for each block of 1024 identifiers (*).  One of
>>> the big wins with the IDA is that it will shrink again after being used.
>>> I didn't read all the way through your patchset to see if you bother to
>>> shrink your bitmap after it's no longer used, but most resizing bitmaps
>>> we have in the kernel don't bother with that part.
>>>
>>> (*) Actually it's more complex than that... between 1025 and 1086,
>>> you'll have a 576 byte chunk, a 128-byte chunk and then use 62 bits of
>>> the next pointer before allocating a 128 byte chunk when reaching ID
>>> 1087.  Similar things happen for the 62 bits after 2048, 3076 and so on.
>>> The individual chunks aren't shrunk until they're empty so if you set ID
>>> 1025 and then ID 1100, then clear ID 1100, the 128-byte chunk will remain
>>> allocated until ID 1025 is cleared.  This probably doesn't matter to you.
>>
>> Sound great, thanks for explaining this. The big problem I see is
>> that IDA/IDR add primitives allocate memory, while they will be used
>> in the places, where they mustn't fail. There is list_lru_add(), and
>> it's called unconditionally in current kernel code. The patchset makes
>> the bitmap be populated in this function. So, we can't use IDR there.
> 
> Maybe we can use GFP_NOFAIL here.  They're small allocations, so we're
> only asking for single-page allocations to not fail, which shouldn't
> put too much strain on the VM.
 
Oh. I'm not sure about this. Even if each allocation is small, there is
theoretically possible a situation, when many lists will want to add first
element. list_lru_add() is called from iput() for example.

Kirill