Re: 回复: [External Mail][PATCH 6.18.y v2] mm: shmem: fix potential livelock issue for shmem direct swapin
From: Baolin Wang
Date: Mon Jul 13 2026 - 22:35:28 EST
On 7/13/26 7:55 PM, 马超 wrote:
When skipping swapcache for synchronous IO swap devices, swapcache_prepare() is used to prevent parallel swapin from proceeding with the swap cache flag.
However, on PREEMPT kernels this can lead to a livelock, as reported by Chao[1]:
Thread A starts direct swapin of a shmem folio and calls swapcache_prepare() to set SWAP_HAS_CACHE. It may then be preempted inside workingset_refault().
Meanwhile, a higher priority thread B also attempts direct swapin of the same shmem swap entry. Since swapcache_prepare() already marks the entry, thread B repeatedly gets -EEXIST and busy-loops waiting for thread A to finish. But as thread B runs at higher priority, thread A cannot preempt it, resulting in starvation and a livelock.
Fix it by yielding the CPU with schedule_timeout_uninterruptible(1) when
swapcache_prepare() fails, following the same approach used in commit 029c4628b2eb ("mm: swap: get rid of livelock in swapin readahead") and commit 13ddaf26be32 ("mm/swap: fix race when skipping swapcache").
However, commit 01626a1823 ("mm: avoid unconditional one-tick sleep when swapcache_prepare fails") found that the unconditional one-tick sleep can cause UI stuttering on latency-sensitive Android devices. So we can follow the same approach by adding a waitqueue to wake up tasks when needed, instead of always sleeping for a full tick.
Note that mainline does not have this potential issue, which has already been resolved by Kairui's swap refactoring work[2].
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/700a2cbf90a2484f979aac858f08f5d4@xxxxxxxxxx/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260517-swap-table-p4-v5-0-88ae43e064c7@xxxxxxxxxxx/
Fixes: 1dd44c0af4fa ("mm: shmem: skip swapcache for swapin of synchronous swap device")
Reported-by: Ma Chao <machao26@xxxxxxxxxx>
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/700a2cbf90a2484f979aac858f08f5d4@xxxxxxxxxx/
Signed-off-by: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Changes from v1:
- Add a waitqueue to wake up tasks when needed.
Hi Chao, could you try this patch to check if fix your issue? Thanks.
---
mm/shmem.c | 14 +++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/mm/shmem.c b/mm/shmem.c
index 94c5b0d78ac3..3c329b794ae4 100644
--- a/mm/shmem.c
+++ b/mm/shmem.c
@@ -2005,11 +2005,14 @@ static struct folio *shmem_alloc_and_add_folio(struct vm_fault *vmf,
return ERR_PTR(error);
}
+static DECLARE_WAIT_QUEUE_HEAD(shmem_swapcache_wq);
+
static struct folio *shmem_swap_alloc_folio(struct inode *inode,
struct vm_area_struct *vma, pgoff_t index,
swp_entry_t entry, int order, gfp_t gfp) {
struct shmem_inode_info *info = SHMEM_I(inode);
+ DECLARE_WAITQUEUE(wait, current);
int nr_pages = 1 << order;
struct folio *new;
gfp_t alloc_gfp;
@@ -2066,6 +2069,10 @@ static struct folio *shmem_swap_alloc_folio(struct inode *inode,
if (swapcache_prepare(entry, nr_pages)) {
folio_put(new);
new = ERR_PTR(-EEXIST);
+ /* Relax a bit to prevent rapid repeated page faults */
+ add_wait_queue(&shmem_swapcache_wq, &wait);
+ schedule_timeout_uninterruptible(1);
+ remove_wait_queue(&shmem_swapcache_wq, &wait);
/* Try smaller folio to avoid cache conflict */
goto fallback;
}
@@ -2423,6 +2430,8 @@ static int shmem_swapin_folio(struct inode *inode, pgoff_t index,
if (skip_swapcache) {
folio->swap.val = 0;
swapcache_clear(si, swap, nr_pages);
+ if (waitqueue_active(&shmem_swapcache_wq))
+ wake_up(&shmem_swapcache_wq);
} else {
swap_cache_del_folio(folio);
}
@@ -2442,8 +2451,11 @@ static int shmem_swapin_folio(struct inode *inode, pgoff_t index,
if (folio)
folio_unlock(folio);
failed_nolock:
- if (skip_swapcache)
+ if (skip_swapcache) {
swapcache_clear(si, folio->swap, folio_nr_pages(folio));
+ if (waitqueue_active(&shmem_swapcache_wq))
+ wake_up(&shmem_swapcache_wq);
+ }
if (folio)
folio_put(folio);
put_swap_device(si);
--
2.47.3
We have conducted stress tests on over 10 pcs for 40 hours each, and no relevant issues have been reproduced.
Thanks for testing. Could you add your 'Tested-by:' tag?