Re: [PATCH] mm, memcg: fix reclaim deadlock with writeback

[Kirill A. Shutemov]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 02:26:45PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>
> 
> Liu Bo has experienced a deadlock between memcg (legacy) reclaim and the
> ext4 writeback
> task1:
> [<ffffffff811aaa52>] wait_on_page_bit+0x82/0xa0
> [<ffffffff811c5777>] shrink_page_list+0x907/0x960
> [<ffffffff811c6027>] shrink_inactive_list+0x2c7/0x680
> [<ffffffff811c6ba4>] shrink_node_memcg+0x404/0x830
> [<ffffffff811c70a8>] shrink_node+0xd8/0x300
> [<ffffffff811c73dd>] do_try_to_free_pages+0x10d/0x330
> [<ffffffff811c7865>] try_to_free_mem_cgroup_pages+0xd5/0x1b0
> [<ffffffff8122df2d>] try_charge+0x14d/0x720
> [<ffffffff812320cc>] memcg_kmem_charge_memcg+0x3c/0xa0
> [<ffffffff812321ae>] memcg_kmem_charge+0x7e/0xd0
> [<ffffffff811b68a8>] __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x178/0x260
> [<ffffffff8120bff5>] alloc_pages_current+0x95/0x140
> [<ffffffff81074247>] pte_alloc_one+0x17/0x40
> [<ffffffff811e34de>] __pte_alloc+0x1e/0x110
> [<ffffffffa06739de>] alloc_set_pte+0x5fe/0xc20
> [<ffffffff811e5d93>] do_fault+0x103/0x970
> [<ffffffff811e6e5e>] handle_mm_fault+0x61e/0xd10
> [<ffffffff8106ea02>] __do_page_fault+0x252/0x4d0
> [<ffffffff8106ecb0>] do_page_fault+0x30/0x80
> [<ffffffff8171bce8>] page_fault+0x28/0x30
> [<ffffffffffffffff>] 0xffffffffffffffff
> 
> task2:
> [<ffffffff811aadc6>] __lock_page+0x86/0xa0
> [<ffffffffa02f1e47>] mpage_prepare_extent_to_map+0x2e7/0x310 [ext4]
> [<ffffffffa08a2689>] ext4_writepages+0x479/0xd60
> [<ffffffff811bbede>] do_writepages+0x1e/0x30
> [<ffffffff812725e5>] __writeback_single_inode+0x45/0x320
> [<ffffffff81272de2>] writeback_sb_inodes+0x272/0x600
> [<ffffffff81273202>] __writeback_inodes_wb+0x92/0xc0
> [<ffffffff81273568>] wb_writeback+0x268/0x300
> [<ffffffff81273d24>] wb_workfn+0xb4/0x390
> [<ffffffff810a2f19>] process_one_work+0x189/0x420
> [<ffffffff810a31fe>] worker_thread+0x4e/0x4b0
> [<ffffffff810a9786>] kthread+0xe6/0x100
> [<ffffffff8171a9a1>] ret_from_fork+0x41/0x50
> [<ffffffffffffffff>] 0xffffffffffffffff
> 
> He adds
> : task1 is waiting for the PageWriteback bit of the page that task2 has
> : collected in mpd->io_submit->io_bio, and tasks2 is waiting for the LOCKED
> : bit the page which tasks1 has locked.
> 
> More precisely task1 is handling a page fault and it has a page locked
> while it charges a new page table to a memcg. That in turn hits a memory
> limit reclaim and the memcg reclaim for legacy controller is waiting on
> the writeback but that is never going to finish because the writeback
> itself is waiting for the page locked in the #PF path. So this is
> essentially ABBA deadlock.

Side node:

Do we have PG_writeback vs. PG_locked ordering documentated somewhere?

IIUC, the trace from task2 suggests that we must not wait for writeback
on the locked page.

But that not what I see for many wait_on_page_writeback() users: it usally
called with the page locked. I see it for truncate, shmem, swapfile,
splice...

Maybe the problem is within task2 codepath after all?

-- 
 Kirill A. Shutemov