Re: [PATCH] sched, fair: Allow a per-cpu kthread waking a task to stack on the same CPU

[Mel Gorman]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 09:21:12AM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > Your light bulb is on point. The XFS unbound workqueue does run near the
> > task and does not directly cause the migration but the IO completions
> > matter. As it turned out, it was the IO completions I was looking at
> > in the old traces but there was insufficient detail to see the exact
> > sequence. I only observed that a bound wq at the end was causing the
> > migration and it was a consistent pattern.
> > 
> > I did a more detailed trace that included workqueue tracepoints. I limited
> > the run to 1 and 2 dbench clients and compared with and without the
> > patch. I still did not dig deep into the specifics of how XFS interacts
> > with workqueues because I'm focused on how the scheduler reacts.
> 
> [snip traces]
> 
> Ok, so it's not /exactly/ as I thought - what is happening is that
> both dbench and the CIL push kworker are issuing IO during fsync
> operations. dbench issues the data IO, the CIL push worker issues
> the journal IO.
> 

This is potentially due to the additional parallelism allowed by the
XFS patch using an unbound workqueue for CIL. dbench can make a little
additional progress and the workqueue and task collide. This may not be
optimal in all cases but at least it can *try* make additional progress.

> > This is an example sequence of what's happening from a scheduler
> > perspective on the vanilla kernel. It's editted a bit because there
> > were a lot of other IOs going on, mostly logging related which confuse
> > the picture.
> > 
> >           dbench-25633 [004] d...   194.998648: workqueue_queue_work: work struct=000000001cccdc2d function=xlog_cil_push_work [xfs] workqueue=00000000d90239c9 req_cpu=512 cpu=4294967295
> >           dbench-25633 [004] d...   194.998650: sched_waking: comm=kworker/u161:6 pid=718 prio=120 target_cpu=006
> >           dbench-25633 [004] d...   194.998655: sched_wakeup: comm=kworker/u161:6 pid=718 prio=120 target_cpu=006
> >   kworker/u161:6-718   [006] ....   194.998692: workqueue_execute_start: work struct 000000001cccdc2d: function xlog_cil_push_work [xfs]
> >   kworker/u161:6-718   [006] ....   194.998706: workqueue_execute_end: work struct 000000001cccdc2d
> > 
> > Dbench is on CPU 4, it queues xlog_cil_push_work on an UNBOUND
> > workqueue. An unbound kworker wakes on CPU 6 and finishes quickly.
> > 
> >   kworker/u161:6-718   [006] ....   194.998707: workqueue_execute_start: work struct 0000000046fbf8d5: function wq_barrier_func
> >   kworker/u161:6-718   [006] d...   194.998708: sched_waking: comm=dbench pid=25633 prio=120 target_cpu=004
> >   kworker/u161:6-718   [006] d...   194.998712: sched_wakeup: comm=dbench pid=25633 prio=120 target_cpu=004
> >   kworker/u161:6-718   [006] ....   194.998713: workqueue_execute_end: work struct 0000000046fbf8d5
> 
> Ok, that's what I'd expect if dbench issued a log force as part of
> an fsync() or synchronous transaction. This is it flushing the CIL
> and waiting for the flush work to complete (wq_barrier_func is what
> wakes the wq flush waiter).
> 
> This doesn't complete the log force, however - the dbench process
> will now do a bit more work and then go to sleep waiting for journal
> IO to complete.
> 

So, it could be argued that it should be serialised but I think it would
be very specific to how dbench behaves. I can't see anything actually
wrong with what XFS does and it's just unfortunate that dbench made enough
progress but still had to go to sleep.

> > The kworker wakes dbench and finding that CPU 4 is still free, dbench
> > uses its previous CPU and no migration occurs.
> > 
> >           dbench-25633 [004] d...   194.998727: workqueue_queue_work: work struct=00000000442434a7 function=blk_mq_requeue_work workqueue=00000000df918933 req_cpu=512 cpu=4
> >           dbench-25633 [004] d...   194.998728: sched_waking: comm=kworker/4:1H pid=991 prio=100 target_cpu=004
> >           dbench-25633 [004] dN..   194.998731: sched_wakeup: comm=kworker/4:1H pid=991 prio=100 target_cpu=004
> > 
> > Dbench queues blk_mq_requeue_work. This is a BOUND workqueue with a
> > mandatory CPU target of 4 so no migration..
> 
> So I spent some time trying to work out how the dbench process
> triggers this directly. This work is queued when a new cache flush
> command is inserted into the request queue, and generally those are
> done by the journal writes via REQ_PREFLUSH | REQ_FUA. Those would
> show up in the context of the xlog_cil_push_work and run on that
> CPU, not the dbench task or CPU.
> 
> So this is probably xfs_file_fsync() calling
> xfs_blkdev_issue_flush() directly because the inode metadata had
> already been written to the journal by an earlier (or racing)
> journal flush.  Hence we have to flush the device cache manually to
> ensure that the data that may have been written is also on stable
> storage. That will insert a flush directly into the request queue,
> and that's likely how we are getting the flush machinery running on
> this CPU.
> 

dbench does call fsync periodically so it's a good fit. Again, it might
be better to let all the work done by the kworker but without a crystal
ball instruction, what XFS does seems reasonable.

> 
> >     kworker/4:1H-991   [004] ....   194.998918: workqueue_execute_start: work struct 0000000072f39adb: function xlog_ioend_work [xfs]
> >     kworker/4:1H-991   [004] d...   194.998943: sched_waking: comm=dbench pid=25633 prio=120 target_cpu=004
> >     kworker/4:1H-991   [004] d...   194.998945: sched_migrate_task: comm=dbench pid=25633 prio=120 orig_cpu=4 dest_cpu=5
> >     kworker/4:1H-991   [004] d...   194.998947: sched_wakeup: comm=dbench pid=25633 prio=120 target_cpu=005
> >     kworker/4:1H-991   [004] ....   194.998948: workqueue_execute_end: work struct 0000000072f39adb
> > 
> > The IO completion handler finishes, the bound workqueue tries to wake
> > dbench on its old CPU. The BOUND kworker is on CPU 4, the task wants
> > CPU 4 but the CPU is busy with the kworker so the scheduler function
> > select_idle_sibling picks CPU 5 instead and now the task is migrated
> > and we have started our round-trip of all CPUs sharing a LLC. It's not a
> > perfect round-robin because p->recent_used_cpu often works.  Looking at
> > the traces, dbench bounces back and forth between CPUs 4 and 5 for 7 IO
> > completions before bouncing between CPUs 6/7 and so on.
> 
> Then this happens.
> 
> Ok, so the commit that made the CIL push work unbound didn't
> introduce this sub-optimal scheduling pattern, it just made it more
> likely to trigger by increasing the likelihood of cache flush
> aggregation. I think the problem was likely first visible when
> blk-mq was introduced because of it's async cache flush machinery
> but it went unnoticed because dbench on blk-mq was faster because of
> all the other improvements blkmq brought to the table....
> 

It probably was masked by the blk-mq switch. While mostly good because
it had been deferred a couple of times while issues were ironed out, it
wasn't perfect. We were just lucky that XFS made a change that made the
problem more obvious.

> > The patch alters the very last stage. The IO completion is a bound kworker
> > and allows the wakee task to use the same CPU and avoid the migration.
> 
> *nod*
> 
> AFAICT, everything is pointing to this being the same issue as the
> AIO/DIO completion issue. We've got a bound worker thread waking an
> unbound user task, and the scheduler is migrating the unbound worker
> task to an idle CPU because it doesn't know we really want
> synchronous wakeup semantics in this situation. And, really, I don't
> think the code doing the wakeup knows whether synchronous wakeup
> semantics are correct, either, as there can be many processes across
> the entire machine waiting on this journal IO completion
> notification. Hence I suspect a runtime evaluated heuristic is the
> best we can do here...
> 

I would prefer the wakeup code did not have to signal that it's a
synchronous wakeup. Sync wakeups so exist but callers got it wrong many
times where stacking was allowed and then the waker did not go to sleep.
While the chain of events are related, they are not related in a very
obvious way. I think it's much safer to keep this as a scheduler
heuristic instead of depending on callers to have sufficient knowledge
of the scheduler implementation.

I still need scheduler people to look at this because stacking tasks
prematurely is generally considered hazardous but with the merge window,
that might take a while. I'll resend the patch later in the window if
there is no response.

Thanks a lot Dave for taking a close look at this and explaining exactly
what XFS is doing and why.

-- 
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs