Re: [PATCH v5 5/7] mm: rework non-root kmem_cache lifecycle management

[Vladimir Davydov]

On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 08:08:28PM +0300, Vladimir Davydov wrote:
> Hello Roman,
> 
> On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 01:07:33PM -0700, Roman Gushchin wrote:
> > This commit makes several important changes in the lifecycle
> > of a non-root kmem_cache, which also affect the lifecycle
> > of a memory cgroup.
> > 
> > Currently each charged slab page has a page->mem_cgroup pointer
> > to the memory cgroup and holds a reference to it.
> > Kmem_caches are held by the memcg and are released with it.
> > It means that none of kmem_caches are released unless at least one
> > reference to the memcg exists, which is not optimal.
> > 
> > So the current scheme can be illustrated as:
> > page->mem_cgroup->kmem_cache.
> > 
> > To implement the slab memory reparenting we need to invert the scheme
> > into: page->kmem_cache->mem_cgroup.
> > 
> > Let's make every page to hold a reference to the kmem_cache (we
> > already have a stable pointer), and make kmem_caches to hold a single
> > reference to the memory cgroup.
> 
> Is there any reason why we can't reference both mem cgroup and kmem
> cache per each charged kmem page? I mean,
> 
>   page->mem_cgroup references mem_cgroup
>   page->kmem_cache references kmem_cache
>   mem_cgroup references kmem_cache while it's online
> 
> TBO it seems to me that not taking a reference to mem cgroup per charged
> kmem page makes the code look less straightforward, e.g. as you
> mentioned in the commit log, we have to use mod_lruvec_state() for memcg
> pages and mod_lruvec_page_state() for root pages.

I think I completely missed the point here. In the following patch you
move kmem caches from a child to the parent cgroup on offline (aka
reparent them). That's why you can't maintain page->mem_cgroup. Sorry
for misunderstanding.