Re: [RFC] simple_lmk: Introduce Simple Low Memory Killer for Android

[Michal Hocko]

On Tue 12-03-19 08:25:41, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 09:05:32AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > On Mon 11-03-19 15:15:35, Suren Baghdasaryan wrote:
> > > Yeah, killing speed is a well-known problem which we are considering
> > > in LMKD. For example the recent LMKD change to assign process being
> > > killed to a cpuset cgroup containing big cores cuts the kill time
> > > considerably. This is not ideal and we are thinking about better ways
> > > to expedite the cleanup process.
> > 
> > If you design is relies on the speed of killing then it is fundamentally
> > flawed AFAICT. You cannot assume anything about how quickly a task dies.
> > It might be blocked in an uninterruptible sleep or performin an
> > operation which takes some time. Sure, oom_reaper might help here but
> > still.
> 
> Many UNINTERRUPTIBLE sleeps can be converted to KILLABLE sleeps.  It just
> needs someone to do the work.

They can and should as much as possible. No question about that. But not
all of them can and that is why nobody should be relying on that. That
is the whole point of having the oom_reaper and async oom victim tear
down.

-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs