[PATCH] sched/fair: handle case of task_h_load() returning 0

[Vincent Guittot]

task_h_load() can return 0 in some situations like running stress-ng
mmapfork, which forks thousands of threads, in a sched group on a 224 cores
system. The load balance doesn't handle this correctly because
env->imbalance never decreases and it will stop pulling tasks only after
reaching loop_max, which can be equal to the number of running tasks of
the cfs. Make sure that imbalance will be decreased by at least 1.

misfit task is the other feature that doesn't handle correctly such
situation although it's probably more difficult to face the problem
because of the smaller number of CPUs and running tasks on heterogenous
system.

We can't simply ensure that task_h_load() returns at least one because it
would imply to handle underrun in other places.

Signed-off-by: Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
 kernel/sched/fair.c | 18 +++++++++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/kernel/sched/fair.c b/kernel/sched/fair.c
index 6fab1d17c575..62747c24aa9e 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/fair.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/fair.c
@@ -4049,7 +4049,13 @@ static inline void update_misfit_status(struct task_struct *p, struct rq *rq)
 		return;
 	}
 
-	rq->misfit_task_load = task_h_load(p);
+	/*
+	 * Make sure that misfit_task_load will not be null even if
+	 * task_h_load() returns 0. misfit_task_load is only used to select
+	 * rq with highest load so adding 1 will not modify the result
+	 * of the comparison.
+	 */
+	rq->misfit_task_load = task_h_load(p) + 1;
 }
 
 #else /* CONFIG_SMP */
@@ -7664,6 +7670,16 @@ static int detach_tasks(struct lb_env *env)
 			    env->sd->nr_balance_failed <= env->sd->cache_nice_tries)
 				goto next;
 
+			/*
+			 * Depending of the number of CPUs and tasks and the
+			 * cgroup hierarchy, task_h_load() can return a null
+			 * value. Make sure that env->imbalance decreases
+			 * otherwise detach_tasks() will stop only after
+			 * detaching up to loop_max tasks.
+			 */
+			if (!load)
+				load = 1;
+
 			env->imbalance -= load;
 			break;
 
-- 
2.17.1