Re: [PATCH] mm: page_counter: mitigate consequences of a page_counter underflow

[Shakeel Butt]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 7:31 AM Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> When the unsigned page_counter underflows, even just by a few pages, a
> cgroup will not be able to run anything afterwards and trigger the OOM
> killer in a loop.
>
> Underflows shouldn't happen, but when they do in practice, we may just
> be off by a small amount that doesn't interfere with the normal
> operation - consequences don't need to be that dire.
>
> Reset the page_counter to 0 upon underflow. We'll issue a warning that
> the accounting will be off and then try to keep limping along.
>
> [ We used to do this with the original res_counter, where it was a
>   more straight-forward correction inside the spinlock section. I
>   didn't carry it forward into the lockless page counters for
>   simplicity, but it turns out this is quite useful in practice. ]
>
> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Reviewed-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@xxxxxxxxxx>