[PATCH 3/3] page_alloc: fix invalid watermark check on a negative value

From: wangyong
Date: Fri Sep 16 2022 - 13:07:23 EST


From: Jaewon Kim <jaewon31.kim@xxxxxxxxxxx>

There was a report that a task is waiting at the
throttle_direct_reclaim. The pgscan_direct_throttle in vmstat was
increasing.

This is a bug where zone_watermark_fast returns true even when the free
is very low. The commit f27ce0e14088 ("page_alloc: consider highatomic
reserve in watermark fast") changed the watermark fast to consider
highatomic reserve. But it did not handle a negative value case which
can be happened when reserved_highatomic pageblock is bigger than the
actual free.

If watermark is considered as ok for the negative value, allocating
contexts for order-0 will consume all free pages without direct reclaim,
and finally free page may become depleted except highatomic free.

Then allocating contexts may fall into throttle_direct_reclaim. This
symptom may easily happen in a system where wmark min is low and other
reclaimers like kswapd does not make free pages quickly.

Handle the negative case by using MIN.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220725095212.25388-1-jaewon31.kim@xxxxxxxxxxx
Fixes: f27ce0e14088 ("page_alloc: consider highatomic reserve in watermark fast")
Signed-off-by: Jaewon Kim <jaewon31.kim@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Reported-by: GyeongHwan Hong <gh21.hong@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Baoquan He <bhe@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Yong-Taek Lee <ytk.lee@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
mm/page_alloc.c | 12 ++++++++----
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index 237463d..d6d8a37 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -3243,11 +3243,15 @@ static inline bool zone_watermark_fast(struct zone *z, unsigned int order,
* need to be calculated.
*/
if (!order) {
- long fast_free;
+ long usable_free;
+ long reserved;

- fast_free = free_pages;
- fast_free -= __zone_watermark_unusable_free(z, 0, alloc_flags);
- if (fast_free > mark + z->lowmem_reserve[classzone_idx])
+ usable_free = free_pages;
+ reserved = __zone_watermark_unusable_free(z, 0, alloc_flags);
+
+ /* reserved may over estimate high-atomic reserves. */
+ usable_free -= min(usable_free, reserved);
+ if (usable_free > mark + z->lowmem_reserve[classzone_idx])
return true;
}

--
2.7.4