[PATCH 4.19 20/50] mm, memcg: fix reclaim deadlock with writeback

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman
Date: Tue Jan 15 2019 - 11:41:57 EST


4.19-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know.

------------------

From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>

commit 63f3655f950186752236bb88a22f8252c11ce394 upstream.

Liu Bo has experienced a deadlock between memcg (legacy) reclaim and the
ext4 writeback

task1:
wait_on_page_bit+0x82/0xa0
shrink_page_list+0x907/0x960
shrink_inactive_list+0x2c7/0x680
shrink_node_memcg+0x404/0x830
shrink_node+0xd8/0x300
do_try_to_free_pages+0x10d/0x330
try_to_free_mem_cgroup_pages+0xd5/0x1b0
try_charge+0x14d/0x720
memcg_kmem_charge_memcg+0x3c/0xa0
memcg_kmem_charge+0x7e/0xd0
__alloc_pages_nodemask+0x178/0x260
alloc_pages_current+0x95/0x140
pte_alloc_one+0x17/0x40
__pte_alloc+0x1e/0x110
alloc_set_pte+0x5fe/0xc20
do_fault+0x103/0x970
handle_mm_fault+0x61e/0xd10
__do_page_fault+0x252/0x4d0
do_page_fault+0x30/0x80
page_fault+0x28/0x30

task2:
__lock_page+0x86/0xa0
mpage_prepare_extent_to_map+0x2e7/0x310 [ext4]
ext4_writepages+0x479/0xd60
do_writepages+0x1e/0x30
__writeback_single_inode+0x45/0x320
writeback_sb_inodes+0x272/0x600
__writeback_inodes_wb+0x92/0xc0
wb_writeback+0x268/0x300
wb_workfn+0xb4/0x390
process_one_work+0x189/0x420
worker_thread+0x4e/0x4b0
kthread+0xe6/0x100
ret_from_fork+0x41/0x50

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:

lock_page(A)
SetPageWriteback(A)
unlock_page(A)
lock_page(B)
lock_page(B)
pte_alloc_pne
shrink_page_list
wait_on_page_writeback(A)
SetPageWriteback(B)
unlock_page(B)

# flush A, B to clear the writeback

This accumulating of more pages to flush is used by several filesystems
to generate a more optimal IO patterns.

Waiting for the writeback in legacy memcg controller is a workaround for
pre-mature OOM killer invocations because there is no dirty IO
throttling available for the controller. There is no easy way around
that unfortunately. Therefore fix this specific issue by pre-allocating
the page table outside of the page lock. We have that handy
infrastructure for that already so simply reuse the fault-around pattern
which already does this.

There are probably other hidden __GFP_ACCOUNT | GFP_KERNEL allocations
from under a fs page locked but they should be really rare. I am not
aware of a better solution unfortunately.

[akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: fix mm/memory.c:__do_fault()]
[akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: coding-style fixes]
[mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx: enhance comment, per Johannes]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181214084948.GA5624@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181213092221.27270-1-mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx
Fixes: c3b94f44fcb0 ("memcg: further prevent OOM with too many dirty pages")
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>
Reported-by: Liu Bo <bo.liu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Debugged-by: Liu Bo <bo.liu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Liu Bo <bo.liu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov.dev@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

---
mm/memory.c | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 23 insertions(+)

--- a/mm/memory.c
+++ b/mm/memory.c
@@ -3237,6 +3237,29 @@ static vm_fault_t __do_fault(struct vm_f
struct vm_area_struct *vma = vmf->vma;
vm_fault_t ret;

+ /*
+ * Preallocate pte before we take page_lock because this might lead to
+ * deadlocks for memcg reclaim which waits for pages under writeback:
+ * lock_page(A)
+ * SetPageWriteback(A)
+ * unlock_page(A)
+ * lock_page(B)
+ * lock_page(B)
+ * pte_alloc_pne
+ * shrink_page_list
+ * wait_on_page_writeback(A)
+ * SetPageWriteback(B)
+ * unlock_page(B)
+ * # flush A, B to clear the writeback
+ */
+ if (pmd_none(*vmf->pmd) && !vmf->prealloc_pte) {
+ vmf->prealloc_pte = pte_alloc_one(vmf->vma->vm_mm,
+ vmf->address);
+ if (!vmf->prealloc_pte)
+ return VM_FAULT_OOM;
+ smp_wmb(); /* See comment in __pte_alloc() */
+ }
+
ret = vma->vm_ops->fault(vmf);
if (unlikely(ret & (VM_FAULT_ERROR | VM_FAULT_NOPAGE | VM_FAULT_RETRY |
VM_FAULT_DONE_COW)))