Re: [PATCH memcg 3/3] memcg: handle memcg oom failures

From: Michal Hocko
Date: Wed Oct 20 2021 - 09:02:23 EST


On Wed 20-10-21 15:14:27, Vasily Averin wrote:
> mem_cgroup_oom() can fail if current task was marked unkillable
> and oom killer cannot find any victim.
>
> Currently we force memcg charge for such allocations,
> however it allow memcg-limited userspace task in to overuse assigned limits
> and potentially trigger the global memory shortage.

You should really go into more details whether that is a practical
problem to handle. OOM_FAILED means that the memcg oom killer couldn't
find any oom victim so it cannot help with a forward progress. There are
not that many situations when that can happen. Naming that would be
really useful.

> Let's fail the memory charge in such cases.
>
> This failure should be somehow recognised in #PF context,

explain why

> so let's use current->memcg_in_oom == (struct mem_cgroup *)OOM_FAILED
>
> ToDo: what is the best way to notify pagefault_out_of_memory() about
> mem_cgroup_out_of_memory failure ?

why don't you simply remove out_of_memory from pagefault_out_of_memory
and leave it only with the blocking memcg OOM handling? Wouldn't that be a
more generic solution? Your first patch already goes that way partially.

This change is more risky than the first one. If somebody returns
VM_FAULT_OOM without invoking allocator then it can loop for ever but
invoking OOM killer in such a situation is equally wrong as the oom
killer cannot really help, right?
--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs