Re: [PATCH] memcg: Replace mm->owner with mm->memcg

[Eric W. Biederman]

Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Wed, 02 May 2018 14:21:35 -0500 ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Eric W. Biederman) wrote:
>
>> Recently it was reported that mm_update_next_owner could get into
>> cases where it was executing it's fallback for_each_process part of
>> the loop and thus taking up a lot of time.
>> 
>> To deal with this replace mm->owner with mm->memcg.  This just reduces
>> the complexity of everything.  As much as possible I have maintained
>> the current semantics.  There are two siginificant exceptions.  During
>> fork the memcg of the process calling fork is charged rather than
>> init_css_set.  During memory cgroup migration the charges are migrated
>> not if the process is the owner of the mm, but if the process being
>> migrated has the same memory cgroup as the mm.
>> 
>> I believe it was a bug if init_css_set is charged for memory activity
>> during fork, and the old behavior was simply a consequence of the new
>> task not having tsk->cgroup not initialized to it's proper cgroup.
>> 
>> Durhing cgroup migration only thread group leaders are allowed to
>> migrate.  Which means in practice there should only be one.  Linux
>> tasks created with CLONE_VM are the only exception, but the common
>> cases are already ruled out.  Processes created with vfork have a
>> suspended parent and can do nothing but call exec so they should never
>> show up.  Threads of the same cgroup are not the thread group leader
>> so also should not show up.  That leaves the old LinuxThreads library
>> which is probably out of use by now, and someone doing something very
>> creative with cgroups, and rolling their own threads with CLONE_VM.
>> So in practice I don't think the difference charge migration will
>> affect anyone.
>> 
>> To ensure that mm->memcg is updated appropriately I have implemented
>> cgroup "attach" and "fork" methods.  This ensures that at those
>> points the mm pointed to the task has the appropriate memory cgroup.
>> 
>> For simplicity instead of introducing a new mm lock I simply use
>> exchange on the pointer where the mm->memcg is updated to get
>> atomic updates.
>> 
>> Looking at the history effectively this change is a revert.  The
>> reason given for adding mm->owner is so that multiple cgroups can be
>> attached to the same mm.  In the last 8 years a second user of
>> mm->owner has not appeared.  A feature that has never used, makes the
>> code more complicated and has horrible worst case performance should
>> go.
>
> Cleanliness nit: I'm not sure that the removal and open-coding of
> mem_cgroup_from_task() actually improved things.  Should we restore
> it?

While writing the patch itself removing mem_cgroup_from_task forced
thinking about which places should use mm->memcg and which places
should use an alternative.

If we want to add it back afterwards with a second patch I don't mind.

I just don't want to have that in the same patch as opportunities get
lost to look at how the memory cgroup should be derived.

Eric

> --- a/mm/memcontrol.c~memcg-replace-mm-owner-with-mm-memcg-fix
> +++ a/mm/memcontrol.c
> @@ -664,6 +664,11 @@ static void memcg_check_events(struct me
>  	}
>  }
>  
> +static inline struct mem_cgroup *mem_cgroup_from_task(struct task_struct *p)
> +{
> +	return mem_cgroup_from_css(task_css(p, memory_cgrp_id));
> +}
> +
>  struct mem_cgroup *get_mem_cgroup_from_mm(struct mm_struct *mm)
>  {
>  	struct mem_cgroup *memcg = NULL;
> @@ -1011,7 +1016,7 @@ bool task_in_mem_cgroup(struct task_stru
>  		 * killed to prevent needlessly killing additional tasks.
>  		 */
>  		rcu_read_lock();
> -		task_memcg = mem_cgroup_from_css(task_css(task, memory_cgrp_id));
> +		task_memcg = mem_cgroup_from_task(task);
>  		css_get(&task_memcg->css);
>  		rcu_read_unlock();
>  	}
> @@ -4829,7 +4834,7 @@ static int mem_cgroup_can_attach(struct
>  	if (!move_flags)
>  		return 0;
>  
> -	from = mem_cgroup_from_css(task_css(p, memory_cgrp_id));
> +	from = mem_cgroup_from_task(p);
>  
>  	VM_BUG_ON(from == memcg);
>  
> @@ -5887,7 +5892,7 @@ void mem_cgroup_sk_alloc(struct sock *sk
>  	}
>  
>  	rcu_read_lock();
> -	memcg = mem_cgroup_from_css(task_css(current, memory_cgrp_id));
> +	memcg = mem_cgroup_from_task(current);
>  	if (memcg == root_mem_cgroup)
>  		goto out;
>  	if (!cgroup_subsys_on_dfl(memory_cgrp_subsys) && !memcg->tcpmem_active)
> _