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2011-07-19vmscan: fix a livelock in kswapdShaohua Li
I'm running a workload which triggers a lot of swap in a machine with 4 nodes. After I kill the workload, I found a kswapd livelock. Sometimes kswapd3 or kswapd2 are keeping running and I can't access filesystem, but most memory is free. This looks like a regression since commit 08951e545918c159 ("mm: vmscan: correct check for kswapd sleeping in sleeping_prematurely"). Node 2 and 3 have only ZONE_NORMAL, but balance_pgdat() will return 0 for classzone_idx. The reason is end_zone in balance_pgdat() is 0 by default, if all zones have watermark ok, end_zone will keep 0. Later sleeping_prematurely() always returns true. Because this is an order 3 wakeup, and if classzone_idx is 0, both balanced_pages and present_pages in pgdat_balanced() are 0. We add a special case here. If a zone has no page, we think it's balanced. This fixes the livelock. Signed-off-by: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-07-08mm: vmscan: only read new_classzone_idx from pgdat when reclaiming successfullyMel Gorman
During allocator-intensive workloads, kswapd will be woken frequently causing free memory to oscillate between the high and min watermark. This is expected behaviour. Unfortunately, if the highest zone is small, a problem occurs. When balance_pgdat() returns, it may be at a lower classzone_idx than it started because the highest zone was unreclaimable. Before checking if it should go to sleep though, it checks pgdat->classzone_idx which when there is no other activity will be MAX_NR_ZONES-1. It interprets this as it has been woken up while reclaiming, skips scheduling and reclaims again. As there is no useful reclaim work to do, it enters into a loop of shrinking slab consuming loads of CPU until the highest zone becomes reclaimable for a long period of time. There are two problems here. 1) If the returned classzone or order is lower, it'll continue reclaiming without scheduling. 2) if the highest zone was marked unreclaimable but balance_pgdat() returns immediately at DEF_PRIORITY, the new lower classzone is not communicated back to kswapd() for sleeping. This patch does two things that are related. If the end_zone is unreclaimable, this information is communicated back. Second, if the classzone or order was reduced due to failing to reclaim, new information is not read from pgdat and instead an attempt is made to go to sleep. Due to this, it is also necessary that pgdat->classzone_idx be initialised each time to pgdat->nr_zones - 1 to avoid re-reads being interpreted as wakeups. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Reported-by: Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com> Tested-by: Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com> Tested-by: Andrew Lutomirski <luto@mit.edu> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-07-08mm: vmscan: evaluate the watermarks against the correct classzoneMel Gorman
When deciding if kswapd is sleeping prematurely, the classzone is taken into account but this is different to what balance_pgdat() and the allocator are doing. Specifically, the DMA zone will be checked based on the classzone used when waking kswapd which could be for a GFP_KERNEL or GFP_HIGHMEM request. The lowmem reserve limit kicks in, the watermark is not met and kswapd thinks it's sleeping prematurely keeping kswapd awake in error. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Reported-by: Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com> Tested-by: Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com> Tested-by: Andrew Lutomirski <luto@mit.edu> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-07-08mm: vmscan: do not apply pressure to slab if we are not applying pressure to ↵Mel Gorman
zone During allocator-intensive workloads, kswapd will be woken frequently causing free memory to oscillate between the high and min watermark. This is expected behaviour. When kswapd applies pressure to zones during node balancing, it checks if the zone is above a high+balance_gap threshold. If it is, it does not apply pressure but it unconditionally shrinks slab on a global basis which is excessive. In the event kswapd is being kept awake due to a high small unreclaimable zone, it skips zone shrinking but still calls shrink_slab(). Once pressure has been applied, the check for zone being unreclaimable is being made before the check is made if all_unreclaimable should be set. This miss of unreclaimable can cause has_under_min_watermark_zone to be set due to an unreclaimable zone preventing kswapd backing off on congestion_wait(). Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Reported-by: Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com> Tested-by: Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com> Tested-by: Andrew Lutomirski <luto@mit.edu> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-07-08mm: vmscan: correct check for kswapd sleeping in sleeping_prematurelyMel Gorman
During allocator-intensive workloads, kswapd will be woken frequently causing free memory to oscillate between the high and min watermark. This is expected behaviour. Unfortunately, if the highest zone is small, a problem occurs. This seems to happen most with recent sandybridge laptops but it's probably a co-incidence as some of these laptops just happen to have a small Normal zone. The reproduction case is almost always during copying large files that kswapd pegs at 100% CPU until the file is deleted or cache is dropped. The problem is mostly down to sleeping_prematurely() keeping kswapd awake when the highest zone is small and unreclaimable and compounded by the fact we shrink slabs even when not shrinking zones causing a lot of time to be spent in shrinkers and a lot of memory to be reclaimed. Patch 1 corrects sleeping_prematurely to check the zones matching the classzone_idx instead of all zones. Patch 2 avoids shrinking slab when we are not shrinking a zone. Patch 3 notes that sleeping_prematurely is checking lower zones against a high classzone which is not what allocators or balance_pgdat() is doing leading to an artifical belief that kswapd should be still awake. Patch 4 notes that when balance_pgdat() gives up on a high zone that the decision is not communicated to sleeping_prematurely() This problem affects 2.6.38.8 for certain and is expected to affect 2.6.39 and 3.0-rc4 as well. If accepted, they need to go to -stable to be picked up by distros and this series is against 3.0-rc4. I've cc'd people that reported similar problems recently to see if they still suffer from the problem and if this fixes it. This patch: correct the check for kswapd sleeping in sleeping_prematurely() During allocator-intensive workloads, kswapd will be woken frequently causing free memory to oscillate between the high and min watermark. This is expected behaviour. A problem occurs if the highest zone is small. balance_pgdat() only considers unreclaimable zones when priority is DEF_PRIORITY but sleeping_prematurely considers all zones. It's possible for this sequence to occur 1. kswapd wakes up and enters balance_pgdat() 2. At DEF_PRIORITY, marks highest zone unreclaimable 3. At DEF_PRIORITY-1, ignores highest zone setting end_zone 4. At DEF_PRIORITY-1, calls shrink_slab freeing memory from highest zone, clearing all_unreclaimable. Highest zone is still unbalanced 5. kswapd returns and calls sleeping_prematurely 6. sleeping_prematurely looks at *all* zones, not just the ones being considered by balance_pgdat. The highest small zone has all_unreclaimable cleared but the zone is not balanced. all_zones_ok is false so kswapd stays awake This patch corrects the behaviour of sleeping_prematurely to check the zones balance_pgdat() checked. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Reported-by: Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com> Tested-by: Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com> Tested-by: Andrew Lutomirski <luto@mit.edu> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-06-27memcg: fix direct softlimit reclaim to be called in limit pathKAMEZAWA Hiroyuki
Commit d149e3b25d7c ("memcg: add the soft_limit reclaim in global direct reclaim") adds a softlimit hook to shrink_zones(). By this, soft limit is called as try_to_free_pages() do_try_to_free_pages() shrink_zones() mem_cgroup_soft_limit_reclaim() Then, direct reclaim is memcg softlimit hint aware, now. But, the memory cgroup's "limit" path can call softlimit shrinker. try_to_free_mem_cgroup_pages() do_try_to_free_pages() shrink_zones() mem_cgroup_soft_limit_reclaim() This will cause a global reclaim when a memcg hits limit. This is bug. soft_limit_reclaim() should be called when scanning_global_lru(sc) == true. And the commit adds a variable "total_scanned" for counting softlimit scanned pages....it's not "total". This patch removes the variable and update sc->nr_scanned instead of it. This will affect shrink_slab()'s scan condition but, global LRU is scanned by softlimit and I think this change makes sense. TODO: avoid too much scanning of a zone when softlimit did enough work. Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp> Cc: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-06-15mm: vmscan: do not use page_count without a page pinAndrea Arcangeli
It is unsafe to run page_count during the physical pfn scan because compound_head could trip on a dangling pointer when reading page->first_page if the compound page is being freed by another CPU. [mgorman@suse.de: split out patch] Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Reviewed-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-06-15vmscan,memcg: memcg aware swap tokenKOSAKI Motohiro
Currently, memcg reclaim can disable swap token even if the swap token mm doesn't belong in its memory cgroup. It's slightly risky. If an admin creates very small mem-cgroup and silly guy runs contentious heavy memory pressure workload, every tasks are going to lose swap token and then system may become unresponsive. That's bad. This patch adds 'memcg' parameter into disable_swap_token(). and if the parameter doesn't match swap token, VM doesn't disable it. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] Signed-off-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel<riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-26memcg: rename mem_cgroup_zone_nr_pages() to mem_cgroup_zone_nr_lru_pages()Ying Han
The caller of the function has been renamed to zone_nr_lru_pages(), and this is just fixing up in the memcg code. The current name is easily to be mis-read as zone's total number of pages. Signed-off-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Acked-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com> Cc: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-26memcg: fix get_scan_count() for small targetsKAMEZAWA Hiroyuki
During memory reclaim we determine the number of pages to be scanned per zone as (anon + file) >> priority. Assume scan = (anon + file) >> priority. If scan < SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX, the scan will be skipped for this time and priority gets higher. This has some problems. 1. This increases priority as 1 without any scan. To do scan in this priority, amount of pages should be larger than 512M. If pages>>priority < SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX, it's recorded and scan will be batched, later. (But we lose 1 priority.) If memory size is below 16M, pages >> priority is 0 and no scan in DEF_PRIORITY forever. 2. If zone->all_unreclaimabe==true, it's scanned only when priority==0. So, x86's ZONE_DMA will never be recoverred until the user of pages frees memory by itself. 3. With memcg, the limit of memory can be small. When using small memcg, it gets priority < DEF_PRIORITY-2 very easily and need to call wait_iff_congested(). For doing scan before priorty=9, 64MB of memory should be used. Then, this patch tries to scan SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX of pages in force...when 1. the target is enough small. 2. it's kswapd or memcg reclaim. Then we can avoid rapid priority drop and may be able to recover all_unreclaimable in a small zones. And this patch removes nr_saved_scan. This will allow scanning in this priority even when pages >> priority is very small. Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Acked-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com> Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-26memcg: reclaim memory from nodes in round-robin orderYing Han
Presently, memory cgroup's direct reclaim frees memory from the current node. But this has some troubles. Usually when a set of threads works in a cooperative way, they tend to operate on the same node. So if they hit limits under memcg they will reclaim memory from themselves, damaging the active working set. For example, assume 2 node system which has Node 0 and Node 1 and a memcg which has 1G limit. After some work, file cache remains and the usages are Node 0: 1M Node 1: 998M. and run an application on Node 0, it will eat its foot before freeing unnecessary file caches. This patch adds round-robin for NUMA and adds equal pressure to each node. When using cpuset's spread memory feature, this will work very well. But yes, a better algorithm is needed. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: comment editing] [kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com: fix time comparisons] Signed-off-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com> Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-26memcg: add the soft_limit reclaim in global direct reclaim.Ying Han
We recently added the change in global background reclaim which counts the return value of soft_limit reclaim. Now this patch adds the similar logic on global direct reclaim. We should skip scanning global LRU on shrink_zone if soft_limit reclaim does enough work. This is the first step where we start with counting the nr_scanned and nr_reclaimed from soft_limit reclaim into global scan_control. Signed-off-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp> Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-26memcg: count the soft_limit reclaim in global background reclaimYing Han
The global kswapd scans per-zone LRU and reclaims pages regardless of the cgroup. It breaks memory isolation since one cgroup can end up reclaiming pages from another cgroup. Instead we should rely on memcg-aware target reclaim including per-memcg kswapd and soft_limit hierarchical reclaim under memory pressure. In the global background reclaim, we do soft reclaim before scanning the per-zone LRU. However, the return value is ignored. This patch is the first step to skip shrink_zone() if soft_limit reclaim does enough work. This is part of the effort which tries to reduce reclaiming pages in global LRU in memcg. The per-memcg background reclaim patchset further enhances the per-cgroup targetting reclaim, which I should have V4 posted shortly. Try running multiple memory intensive workloads within seperate memcgs. Watch the counters of soft_steal in memory.stat. $ cat /dev/cgroup/A/memory.stat | grep 'soft' soft_steal 240000 soft_scan 240000 total_soft_steal 240000 total_soft_scan 240000 This patch: In the global background reclaim, we do soft reclaim before scanning the per-zone LRU. However, the return value is ignored. We would like to skip shrink_zone() if soft_limit reclaim does enough work. Also, we need to make the memory pressure balanced across per-memcg zones, like the logic vm-core. This patch is the first step where we start with counting the nr_scanned and nr_reclaimed from soft_limit reclaim into the global scan_control. Signed-off-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com> Acked-by: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-25vmscan: change shrinker API by passing shrink_control structYing Han
Change each shrinker's API by consolidating the existing parameters into shrink_control struct. This will simplify any further features added w/o touching each file of shrinker. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix build] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix warning] [kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: fix up new shrinker API] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix xfs warning] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: update gfs2] Signed-off-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Acked-by: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@openvz.org> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-25vmscan: change shrink_slab() interfaces by passing shrink_controlYing Han
Consolidate the existing parameters to shrink_slab() into a new shrink_control struct. This is needed later to pass the same struct to shrinkers. Signed-off-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Acked-by: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@openvz.org> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-25mm: strictly require elevated page refcount in isolate_lru_page()Konstantin Khlebnikov
isolate_lru_page() must be called only with stable reference to the page, this is what is written in the comment above it, this is reasonable. current isolate_lru_page() users and its page extra reference sources: mm/huge_memory.c: __collapse_huge_page_isolate() - reference from pte mm/memcontrol.c: mem_cgroup_move_parent() - get_page_unless_zero() mem_cgroup_move_charge_pte_range() - reference from pte mm/memory-failure.c: soft_offline_page() - fixed, reference from get_any_page() delete_from_lru_cache() - reference from caller or get_page_unless_zero() [ seems like there bug, because __memory_failure() can call page_action() for hpages tail, but it is ok for isolate_lru_page(), tail getted and not in lru] mm/memory_hotplug.c: do_migrate_range() - fixed, get_page_unless_zero() mm/mempolicy.c: migrate_page_add() - reference from pte mm/migrate.c: do_move_page_to_node_array() - reference from follow_page() mlock.c: - various external references mm/vmscan.c: putback_lru_page() - reference from isolate_lru_page() It seems that all isolate_lru_page() users are ready now for this restriction. So, let's replace redundant get_page_unless_zero() with get_page() and add page initial reference count check with VM_BUG_ON() Signed-off-by: Konstantin Khlebnikov <khlebnikov@openvz.org> Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-25mm: vmscan: correctly check if reclaimer should schedule during shrink_slabMinchan Kim
It has been reported on some laptops that kswapd is consuming large amounts of CPU and not being scheduled when SLUB is enabled during large amounts of file copying. It is expected that this is due to kswapd missing every cond_resched() point because; shrink_page_list() calls cond_resched() if inactive pages were isolated which in turn may not happen if all_unreclaimable is set in shrink_zones(). If for whatver reason, all_unreclaimable is set on all zones, we can miss calling cond_resched(). balance_pgdat() only calls cond_resched if the zones are not balanced. For a high-order allocation that is balanced, it checks order-0 again. During that window, order-0 might have become unbalanced so it loops again for order-0 and returns that it was reclaiming for order-0 to kswapd(). It can then find that a caller has rewoken kswapd for a high-order and re-enters balance_pgdat() without ever calling cond_resched(). shrink_slab only calls cond_resched() if we are reclaiming slab pages. If there are a large number of direct reclaimers, the shrinker_rwsem can be contended and prevent kswapd calling cond_resched(). This patch modifies the shrink_slab() case. If the semaphore is contended, the caller will still check cond_resched(). After each successful call into a shrinker, the check for cond_resched() remains in case one shrinker is particularly slow. [mgorman@suse.de: preserve call to cond_resched after each call into shrinker] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> Tested-by: Colin King <colin.king@canonical.com> Cc: Raghavendra D Prabhu <raghu.prabhu13@gmail.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> [2.6.38+] Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-25mm: vmscan: correct use of pgdat_balanced in sleeping_prematurelyJohannes Weiner
There are a few reports of people experiencing hangs when copying large amounts of data with kswapd using a large amount of CPU which appear to be due to recent reclaim changes. SLUB using high orders is the trigger but not the root cause as SLUB has been using high orders for a while. The root cause was bugs introduced into reclaim which are addressed by the following two patches. Patch 1 corrects logic introduced by commit 1741c877 ("mm: kswapd: keep kswapd awake for high-order allocations until a percentage of the node is balanced") to allow kswapd to go to sleep when balanced for high orders. Patch 2 notes that it is possible for kswapd to miss every cond_resched() and updates shrink_slab() so it'll at least reach that scheduling point. Chris Wood reports that these two patches in isolation are sufficient to prevent the system hanging. AFAIK, they should also resolve similar hangs experienced by James Bottomley. This patch: Johannes Weiner poined out that the logic in commit 1741c877 ("mm: kswapd: keep kswapd awake for high-order allocations until a percentage of the node is balanced") is backwards. Instead of allowing kswapd to go to sleep when balancing for high order allocations, it keeps it kswapd running uselessly. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Reviewed-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> Tested-by: Colin King <colin.king@canonical.com> Cc: Raghavendra D Prabhu <raghu.prabhu13@gmail.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> [2.6.38+] Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-20sanitize <linux/prefetch.h> usageLinus Torvalds
Commit e66eed651fd1 ("list: remove prefetching from regular list iterators") removed the include of prefetch.h from list.h, which uncovered several cases that had apparently relied on that rather obscure header file dependency. So this fixes things up a bit, using grep -L linux/prefetch.h $(git grep -l '[^a-z_]prefetchw*(' -- '*.[ch]') grep -L 'prefetchw*(' $(git grep -l 'linux/prefetch.h' -- '*.[ch]') to guide us in finding files that either need <linux/prefetch.h> inclusion, or have it despite not needing it. There are more of them around (mostly network drivers), but this gets many core ones. Reported-by: Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-05-18memcg: fix zone congestionKAMEZAWA Hiroyuki
ZONE_CONGESTED should be a state of global memory reclaim. If not, a busy memcg sets this and give unnecessary throttoling in wait_iff_congested() against memory recalim in other contexts. This makes system performance bad. I'll think about "memcg is congested!" flag is required or not, later. But this fix is required first. Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp> Acked-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com> Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <jweiner@redhat.com> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-04-14vmscan: all_unreclaimable() use zone->all_unreclaimable as a nameKOSAKI Motohiro
all_unreclaimable check in direct reclaim has been introduced at 2.6.19 by following commit. 2006 Sep 25; commit 408d8544; oom: use unreclaimable info And it went through strange history. firstly, following commit broke the logic unintentionally. 2008 Apr 29; commit a41f24ea; page allocator: smarter retry of costly-order allocations Two years later, I've found obvious meaningless code fragment and restored original intention by following commit. 2010 Jun 04; commit bb21c7ce; vmscan: fix do_try_to_free_pages() return value when priority==0 But, the logic didn't works when 32bit highmem system goes hibernation and Minchan slightly changed the algorithm and fixed it . 2010 Sep 22: commit d1908362: vmscan: check all_unreclaimable in direct reclaim path But, recently, Andrey Vagin found the new corner case. Look, struct zone { .. int all_unreclaimable; .. unsigned long pages_scanned; .. } zone->all_unreclaimable and zone->pages_scanned are neigher atomic variables nor protected by lock. Therefore zones can become a state of zone->page_scanned=0 and zone->all_unreclaimable=1. In this case, current all_unreclaimable() return false even though zone->all_unreclaimabe=1. This resulted in the kernel hanging up when executing a loop of the form 1. fork 2. mmap 3. touch memory 4. read memory 5. munmmap as described in http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/1348725#1348725 Is this ignorable minor issue? No. Unfortunately, x86 has very small dma zone and it become zone->all_unreclamble=1 easily. and if it become all_unreclaimable=1, it never restore all_unreclaimable=0. Why? if all_unreclaimable=1, vmscan only try DEF_PRIORITY reclaim and a-few-lru-pages>>DEF_PRIORITY always makes 0. that mean no page scan at all! Eventually, oom-killer never works on such systems. That said, we can't use zone->pages_scanned for this purpose. This patch restore all_unreclaimable() use zone->all_unreclaimable as old. and in addition, to add oom_killer_disabled check to avoid reintroduce the issue of commit d1908362 ("vmscan: check all_unreclaimable in direct reclaim path"). Reported-by: Andrey Vagin <avagin@openvz.org> Signed-off-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@kernel.dk> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-03-31Fix common misspellingsLucas De Marchi
Fixes generated by 'codespell' and manually reviewed. Signed-off-by: Lucas De Marchi <lucas.demarchi@profusion.mobi>
2011-03-24Merge branch 'for-2.6.39/core' of git://git.kernel.dk/linux-2.6-blockLinus Torvalds
* 'for-2.6.39/core' of git://git.kernel.dk/linux-2.6-block: (65 commits) Documentation/iostats.txt: bit-size reference etc. cfq-iosched: removing unnecessary think time checking cfq-iosched: Don't clear queue stats when preempt. blk-throttle: Reset group slice when limits are changed blk-cgroup: Only give unaccounted_time under debug cfq-iosched: Don't set active queue in preempt block: fix non-atomic access to genhd inflight structures block: attempt to merge with existing requests on plug flush block: NULL dereference on error path in __blkdev_get() cfq-iosched: Don't update group weights when on service tree fs: assign sb->s_bdi to default_backing_dev_info if the bdi is going away block: Require subsystems to explicitly allocate bio_set integrity mempool jbd2: finish conversion from WRITE_SYNC_PLUG to WRITE_SYNC and explicit plugging jbd: finish conversion from WRITE_SYNC_PLUG to WRITE_SYNC and explicit plugging fs: make fsync_buffers_list() plug mm: make generic_writepages() use plugging blk-cgroup: Add unaccounted time to timeslice_used. block: fixup plugging stubs for !CONFIG_BLOCK block: remove obsolete comments for blkdev_issue_zeroout. blktrace: Use rq->cmd_flags directly in blk_add_trace_rq. ... Fix up conflicts in fs/{aio.c,super.c}
2011-03-22mm: vmscan: kswapd should not free an excessive number of pages when ↵Mel Gorman
balancing small zones When reclaiming for order-0 pages, kswapd requires that all zones be balanced. Each cycle through balance_pgdat() does background ageing on all zones if necessary and applies equal pressure on the inactive zone unless a lot of pages are free already. A "lot of free pages" is defined as a "balance gap" above the high watermark which is currently 7*high_watermark. Historically this was reasonable as min_free_kbytes was small. However, on systems using huge pages, it is recommended that min_free_kbytes is higher and it is tuned with hugeadm --set-recommended-min_free_kbytes. With the introduction of transparent huge page support, this recommended value is also applied. On X86-64 with 4G of memory, min_free_kbytes becomes 67584 so one would expect around 68M of memory to be free. The Normal zone is approximately 35000 pages so under even normal memory pressure such as copying a large file, it gets exhausted quickly. As it is getting exhausted, kswapd applies pressure equally to all zones, including the DMA32 zone. DMA32 is approximately 700,000 pages with a high watermark of around 23,000 pages. In this situation, kswapd will reclaim around (23000*8 where 8 is the high watermark + balance gap of 7 * high watermark) pages or 718M of pages before the zone is ignored. What the user sees is that free memory far higher than it should be. To avoid an excessive number of pages being reclaimed from the larger zones, explicitely defines the "balance gap" to be either 1% of the zone or the low watermark for the zone, whichever is smaller. While kswapd will check all zones to apply pressure, it'll ignore zones that meets the (high_wmark + balance_gap) watermark. To test this, 80G were copied from a partition and the amount of memory being used was recorded. A comparison of a patch and unpatched kernel can be seen at http://www.csn.ul.ie/~mel/postings/minfree-20110222/memory-usage-hydra.ps and shows that kswapd is not reclaiming as much memory with the patch applied. Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Cc: "Chen, Tim C" <tim.c.chen@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-03-22mm: change __remove_from_page_cache()Minchan Kim
Now we renamed remove_from_page_cache with delete_from_page_cache. As consistency of __remove_from_swap_cache and remove_from_swap_cache, we change internal page cache handling function name, too. Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> Acked-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Reviewed-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-03-22mm: compaction: prevent kswapd compacting memory to reduce CPU usageAndrea Arcangeli
This patch reverts 5a03b051 ("thp: use compaction in kswapd for GFP_ATOMIC order > 0") due to reports stating that kswapd CPU usage was higher and IRQs were being disabled more frequently. This was reported at http://www.spinics.net/linux/fedora/alsa-user/msg09885.html. Without this patch applied, CPU usage by kswapd hovers around the 20% mark according to the tester (Arthur Marsh: http://www.spinics.net/linux/fedora/alsa-user/msg09899.html). With this patch applied, it's around 2%. The problem is not related to THP which specifies __GFP_NO_KSWAPD but is triggered by high-order allocations hitting the low watermark for their order and waking kswapd on kernels with CONFIG_COMPACTION set. The most common trigger for this is network cards configured for jumbo frames but it's also possible it'll be triggered by fork-heavy workloads (order-1) and some wireless cards which depend on order-1 allocations. The symptoms for the user will be high CPU usage by kswapd in low-memory situations which could be confused with another writeback problem. While a patch like 5a03b051 may be reintroduced in the future, this patch plays it safe for now and reverts it. [mel@csn.ul.ie: Beefed up the changelog] Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reported-by: Arthur Marsh <arthur.marsh@internode.on.net> Tested-by: Arthur Marsh <arthur.marsh@internode.on.net> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> [2.6.38.1] Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-03-10Merge branch 'for-2.6.39/stack-plug' into for-2.6.39/coreJens Axboe
Conflicts: block/blk-core.c block/blk-flush.c drivers/md/raid1.c drivers/md/raid10.c drivers/md/raid5.c fs/nilfs2/btnode.c fs/nilfs2/mdt.c Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
2011-03-10block: remove per-queue pluggingJens Axboe
Code has been converted over to the new explicit on-stack plugging, and delay users have been converted to use the new API for that. So lets kill off the old plugging along with aops->sync_page(). Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
2011-02-25mm: vmscan: stop reclaim/compaction earlier due to insufficient progress if ↵Mel Gorman
!__GFP_REPEAT should_continue_reclaim() for reclaim/compaction allows scanning to continue even if pages are not being reclaimed until the full list is scanned. In terms of allocation success, this makes sense but potentially it introduces unwanted latency for high-order allocations such as transparent hugepages and network jumbo frames that would prefer to fail the allocation attempt and fallback to order-0 pages. Worse, there is a potential that the full LRU scan will clear all the young bits, distort page aging information and potentially push pages into swap that would have otherwise remained resident. This patch will stop reclaim/compaction if no pages were reclaimed in the last SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX pages that were considered. For allocations such as hugetlbfs that use __GFP_REPEAT and have fewer fallback options, the full LRU list may still be scanned. Order-0 allocation should not be affected because RECLAIM_MODE_COMPACTION is not set so the following avoids the gfp_mask being examined: if (!(sc->reclaim_mode & RECLAIM_MODE_COMPACTION)) return false; A tool was developed based on ftrace that tracked the latency of high-order allocations while transparent hugepage support was enabled and three benchmarks were run. The "fix-infinite" figures are 2.6.38-rc4 with Johannes's patch "vmscan: fix zone shrinking exit when scan work is done" applied. STREAM Highorder Allocation Latency Statistics fix-infinite break-early 1 :: Count 10298 10229 1 :: Min 0.4560 0.4640 1 :: Mean 1.0589 1.0183 1 :: Max 14.5990 11.7510 1 :: Stddev 0.5208 0.4719 2 :: Count 2 1 2 :: Min 1.8610 3.7240 2 :: Mean 3.4325 3.7240 2 :: Max 5.0040 3.7240 2 :: Stddev 1.5715 0.0000 9 :: Count 111696 111694 9 :: Min 0.5230 0.4110 9 :: Mean 10.5831 10.5718 9 :: Max 38.4480 43.2900 9 :: Stddev 1.1147 1.1325 Mean time for order-1 allocations is reduced. order-2 looks increased but with so few allocations, it's not particularly significant. THP mean allocation latency is also reduced. That said, allocation time varies so significantly that the reductions are within noise. Max allocation time is reduced by a significant amount for low-order allocations but reduced for THP allocations which presumably are now breaking before reclaim has done enough work. SysBench Highorder Allocation Latency Statistics fix-infinite break-early 1 :: Count 15745 15677 1 :: Min 0.4250 0.4550 1 :: Mean 1.1023 1.0810 1 :: Max 14.4590 10.8220 1 :: Stddev 0.5117 0.5100 2 :: Count 1 1 2 :: Min 3.0040 2.1530 2 :: Mean 3.0040 2.1530 2 :: Max 3.0040 2.1530 2 :: Stddev 0.0000 0.0000 9 :: Count 2017 1931 9 :: Min 0.4980 0.7480 9 :: Mean 10.4717 10.3840 9 :: Max 24.9460 26.2500 9 :: Stddev 1.1726 1.1966 Again, mean time for order-1 allocations is reduced while order-2 allocations are too few to draw conclusions from. The mean time for THP allocations is also slightly reduced albeit the reductions are within varianes. Once again, our maximum allocation time is significantly reduced for low-order allocations and slightly increased for THP allocations. Anon stream mmap reference Highorder Allocation Latency Statistics 1 :: Count 1376 1790 1 :: Min 0.4940 0.5010 1 :: Mean 1.0289 0.9732 1 :: Max 6.2670 4.2540 1 :: Stddev 0.4142 0.2785 2 :: Count 1 - 2 :: Min 1.9060 - 2 :: Mean 1.9060 - 2 :: Max 1.9060 - 2 :: Stddev 0.0000 - 9 :: Count 11266 11257 9 :: Min 0.4990 0.4940 9 :: Mean 27250.4669 24256.1919 9 :: Max 11439211.0000 6008885.0000 9 :: Stddev 226427.4624 186298.1430 This benchmark creates one thread per CPU which references an amount of anonymous memory 1.5 times the size of physical RAM. This pounds swap quite heavily and is intended to exercise THP a bit. Mean allocation time for order-1 is reduced as before. It's also reduced for THP allocations but the variations here are pretty massive due to swap. As before, maximum allocation times are significantly reduced. Overall, the patch reduces the mean and maximum allocation latencies for the smaller high-order allocations. This was with Slab configured so it would be expected to be more significant with Slub which uses these size allocations more aggressively. The mean allocation times for THP allocations are also slightly reduced. The maximum latency was slightly increased as predicted by the comments due to reclaim/compaction breaking early. However, workloads care more about the latency of lower-order allocations than THP so it's an acceptable trade-off. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Acked-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Acked-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Cc: Kent Overstreet <kent.overstreet@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-02-11vmscan: fix zone shrinking exit when scan work is doneJohannes Weiner
Commit 3e7d34497067 ("mm: vmscan: reclaim order-0 and use compaction instead of lumpy reclaim") introduced an indefinite loop in shrink_zone(). It meant to break out of this loop when no pages had been reclaimed and not a single page was even scanned. The way it would detect the latter is by taking a snapshot of sc->nr_scanned at the beginning of the function and comparing it against the new sc->nr_scanned after the scan loop. But it would re-iterate without updating that snapshot, looping forever if sc->nr_scanned changed at least once since shrink_zone() was invoked. This is not the sole condition that would exit that loop, but it requires other processes to change the zone state, as the reclaimer that is stuck obviously can not anymore. This is only happening for higher-order allocations, where reclaim is run back to back with compaction. Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Reported-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Tested-by: Kent Overstreet<kent.overstreet@gmail.com> Reported-by: Kent Overstreet <kent.overstreet@gmail.com> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-26mm: fix deferred congestion timeout if preferred zone is not allowedDavid Rientjes
Before 0e093d99763e ("writeback: do not sleep on the congestion queue if there are no congested BDIs or if significant congestion is not being encountered in the current zone"), preferred_zone was only used for NUMA statistics, to determine the zoneidx from which to allocate from given the type requested, and whether to utilize memory compaction. wait_iff_congested(), though, uses preferred_zone to determine if the congestion wait should be deferred because its dirty pages are backed by a congested bdi. This incorrectly defers the timeout and busy loops in the page allocator with various cond_resched() calls if preferred_zone is not allowed in the current context, usually consuming 100% of a cpu. This patch ensures preferred_zone is an allowed zone in the fastpath depending on whether current is constrained by its cpuset or nodes in its mempolicy (when the nodemask passed is non-NULL). This is correct since the fastpath allocation always passes ALLOC_CPUSET when trying to allocate memory. In the slowpath, this patch resets preferred_zone to the first zone of the allowed type when the allocation is not constrained by current's cpuset, i.e. it does not pass ALLOC_CPUSET. This patch also ensures preferred_zone is from the set of allowed nodes when called from within direct reclaim since allocations are always constrained by cpusets in this context (it is blockable). Both of these uses of cpuset_current_mems_allowed are protected by get_mems_allowed(). Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-20mm/vmscan.c: remove duplicate include of compaction.hJesper Juhl
Signed-off-by: Jesper Juhl <jj@chaosbits.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-17Revert "mm: batch activate_page() to reduce lock contention"Linus Torvalds
This reverts commit 744ed1442757767ffede5008bb13e0805085902e. Chris Mason ended up chasing down some page allocation errors and pages stuck waiting on the IO scheduler, and was able to narrow it down to two commits: commit 744ed1442757 ("mm: batch activate_page() to reduce lock contention") and d8505dee1a87 ("mm: simplify code of swap.c"). This reverts the first of them. Reported-and-debugged-by: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Cc: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com> Cc: linux-mm <linux-mm@kvack.org> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Cc: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: batch activate_page() to reduce lock contentionShaohua Li
The zone->lru_lock is heavily contented in workload where activate_page() is frequently used. We could do batch activate_page() to reduce the lock contention. The batched pages will be added into zone list when the pool is full or page reclaim is trying to drain them. For example, in a 4 socket 64 CPU system, create a sparse file and 64 processes, processes shared map to the file. Each process read access the whole file and then exit. The process exit will do unmap_vmas() and cause a lot of activate_page() call. In such workload, we saw about 58% total time reduction with below patch. Other workloads with a lot of activate_page also benefits a lot too. I tested some microbenchmarks: case-anon-cow-rand-mt 0.58% case-anon-cow-rand -3.30% case-anon-cow-seq-mt -0.51% case-anon-cow-seq -5.68% case-anon-r-rand-mt 0.23% case-anon-r-rand 0.81% case-anon-r-seq-mt -0.71% case-anon-r-seq -1.99% case-anon-rx-rand-mt 2.11% case-anon-rx-seq-mt 3.46% case-anon-w-rand-mt -0.03% case-anon-w-rand -0.50% case-anon-w-seq-mt -1.08% case-anon-w-seq -0.12% case-anon-wx-rand-mt -5.02% case-anon-wx-seq-mt -1.43% case-fork 1.65% case-fork-sleep -0.07% case-fork-withmem 1.39% case-hugetlb -0.59% case-lru-file-mmap-read-mt -0.54% case-lru-file-mmap-read 0.61% case-lru-file-mmap-read-rand -2.24% case-lru-file-readonce -0.64% case-lru-file-readtwice -11.69% case-lru-memcg -1.35% case-mmap-pread-rand-mt 1.88% case-mmap-pread-rand -15.26% case-mmap-pread-seq-mt 0.89% case-mmap-pread-seq -69.72% case-mmap-xread-rand-mt 0.71% case-mmap-xread-seq-mt 0.38% The most significent are: case-lru-file-readtwice -11.69% case-mmap-pread-rand -15.26% case-mmap-pread-seq -69.72% which use activate_page a lot. others are basically variations because each run has slightly difference. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] Signed-off-by: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13thp: scale nr_rotated to balance memory pressureRik van Riel
Make sure we scale up nr_rotated when we encounter a referenced transparent huge page. This ensures pageout scanning balance is not distorted when there are huge pages on the LRU. Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13thp: fix anon memory statistics with transparent hugepagesRik van Riel
Count each transparent hugepage as HPAGE_PMD_NR pages in the LRU statistics, so the Active(anon) and Inactive(anon) statistics in /proc/meminfo are correct. Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13thp: use compaction in kswapd for GFP_ATOMIC order > 0Andrea Arcangeli
This takes advantage of memory compaction to properly generate pages of order > 0 if regular page reclaim fails and priority level becomes more severe and we don't reach the proper watermarks. Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: kswapd: use the classzone idx that kswapd was using for ↵Mel Gorman
sleeping_prematurely() When kswapd is woken up for a high-order allocation, it takes account of the highest usable zone by the caller (the classzone idx). During allocation, this index is used to select the lowmem_reserve[] that should be applied to the watermark calculation in zone_watermark_ok(). When balancing a node, kswapd considers the highest unbalanced zone to be the classzone index. This will always be at least be the callers classzone_idx and can be higher. However, sleeping_prematurely() always considers the lowest zone (e.g. ZONE_DMA) to be the classzone index. This means that sleeping_prematurely() can consider a zone to be balanced that is unusable by the allocation request that originally woke kswapd. This patch changes sleeping_prematurely() to use a classzone_idx matching the value it used in balance_pgdat(). Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@mgebm.net> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Simon Kirby <sim@hostway.ca> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: kswapd: treat zone->all_unreclaimable in sleeping_prematurely similar to ↵Mel Gorman
balance_pgdat() After DEF_PRIORITY, balance_pgdat() considers all_unreclaimable zones to be balanced but sleeping_prematurely does not. This can force kswapd to stay awake longer than it should. This patch fixes it. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@mgebm.net> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Simon Kirby <sim@hostway.ca> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: kswapd: reset kswapd_max_order and classzone_idx after readingMel Gorman
When kswapd wakes up, it reads its order and classzone from pgdat and calls balance_pgdat. While its awake, it potentially reclaimes at a high order and a low classzone index. This might have been a once-off that was not required by subsequent callers. However, because the pgdat values were not reset, they remain artifically high while balance_pgdat() is running and potentially kswapd enters a second unnecessary reclaim cycle. Reset the pgdat order and classzone index after reading. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Reviewed-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@mgebm.net> Cc: Simon Kirby <sim@hostway.ca> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: kswapd: use the order that kswapd was reclaiming at for ↵Mel Gorman
sleeping_prematurely() Before kswapd goes to sleep, it uses sleeping_prematurely() to check if there was a race pushing a zone below its watermark. If the race happened, it stays awake. However, balance_pgdat() can decide to reclaim at order-0 if it decides that high-order reclaim is not working as expected. This information is not passed back to sleeping_prematurely(). The impact is that kswapd remains awake reclaiming pages long after it should have gone to sleep. This patch passes the adjusted order to sleeping_prematurely and uses the same logic as balance_pgdat to decide if it's ok to go to sleep. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Reviewed-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@mgebm.net> Cc: Simon Kirby <sim@hostway.ca> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: kswapd: keep kswapd awake for high-order allocations until a percentage ↵Mel Gorman
of the node is balanced When reclaiming for high-orders, kswapd is responsible for balancing a node but it should not reclaim excessively. It avoids excessive reclaim by considering if any zone in a node is balanced then the node is balanced. In the cases where there are imbalanced zone sizes (e.g. ZONE_DMA with both ZONE_DMA32 and ZONE_NORMAL), kswapd can go to sleep prematurely as just one small zone was balanced. This alters the sleep logic of kswapd slightly. It counts the number of pages that make up the balanced zones. If the total number of balanced pages is more than a quarter of the zone, kswapd will go back to sleep. This should keep a node balanced without reclaiming an excessive number of pages. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Reviewed-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@mgebm.net> Cc: Simon Kirby <sim@hostway.ca> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: kswapd: stop high-order balancing when any suitable zone is balancedMel Gorman
Simon Kirby reported the following problem We're seeing cases on a number of servers where cache never fully grows to use all available memory. Sometimes we see servers with 4 GB of memory that never seem to have less than 1.5 GB free, even with a constantly-active VM. In some cases, these servers also swap out while this happens, even though they are constantly reading the working set into memory. We have been seeing this happening for a long time; I don't think it's anything recent, and it still happens on 2.6.36. After some debugging work by Simon, Dave Hansen and others, the prevaling theory became that kswapd is reclaiming order-3 pages requested by SLUB too aggressive about it. There are two apparent problems here. On the target machine, there is a small Normal zone in comparison to DMA32. As kswapd tries to balance all zones, it would continually try reclaiming for Normal even though DMA32 was balanced enough for callers. The second problem is that sleeping_prematurely() does not use the same logic as balance_pgdat() when deciding whether to sleep or not. This keeps kswapd artifically awake. A number of tests were run and the figures from previous postings will look very different for a few reasons. One, the old figures were forcing my network card to use GFP_ATOMIC in attempt to replicate Simon's problem. Second, I previous specified slub_min_order=3 again in an attempt to reproduce Simon's problem. In this posting, I'm depending on Simon to say whether his problem is fixed or not and these figures are to show the impact to the ordinary cases. Finally, the "vmscan" figures are taken from /proc/vmstat instead of the tracepoints. There is less information but recording is less disruptive. The first test of relevance was postmark with a process running in the background reading a large amount of anonymous memory in blocks. The objective was to vaguely simulate what was happening on Simon's machine and it's memory intensive enough to have kswapd awake. POSTMARK traceonly kanyzone Transactions per second: 156.00 ( 0.00%) 153.00 (-1.96%) Data megabytes read per second: 21.51 ( 0.00%) 21.52 ( 0.05%) Data megabytes written per second: 29.28 ( 0.00%) 29.11 (-0.58%) Files created alone per second: 250.00 ( 0.00%) 416.00 (39.90%) Files create/transact per second: 79.00 ( 0.00%) 76.00 (-3.95%) Files deleted alone per second: 520.00 ( 0.00%) 420.00 (-23.81%) Files delete/transact per second: 79.00 ( 0.00%) 76.00 (-3.95%) MMTests Statistics: duration User/Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 16.58 17.4 Total Elapsed Time (seconds) 218.48 222.47 VMstat Reclaim Statistics: vmscan Direct reclaims 0 4 Direct reclaim pages scanned 0 203 Direct reclaim pages reclaimed 0 184 Kswapd pages scanned 326631 322018 Kswapd pages reclaimed 312632 309784 Kswapd low wmark quickly 1 4 Kswapd high wmark quickly 122 475 Kswapd skip congestion_wait 1 0 Pages activated 700040 705317 Pages deactivated 212113 203922 Pages written 9875 6363 Total pages scanned 326631 322221 Total pages reclaimed 312632 309968 %age total pages scanned/reclaimed 95.71% 96.20% %age total pages scanned/written 3.02% 1.97% proc vmstat: Faults Major Faults 300 254 Minor Faults 645183 660284 Page ins 493588 486704 Page outs 4960088 4986704 Swap ins 1230 661 Swap outs 9869 6355 Performance is mildly affected because kswapd is no longer doing as much work and the background memory consumer process is getting in the way. Note that kswapd scanned and reclaimed fewer pages as it's less aggressive and overall fewer pages were scanned and reclaimed. Swap in/out is particularly reduced again reflecting kswapd throwing out fewer pages. The slight performance impact is unfortunate here but it looks like a direct result of kswapd being less aggressive. As the bug report is about too many pages being freed by kswapd, it may have to be accepted for now. The second test is a streaming IO benchmark that was previously used by Johannes to show regressions in page reclaim. MICRO traceonly kanyzone User/Sys Time Running Test (seconds) 29.29 28.87 Total Elapsed Time (seconds) 492.18 488.79 VMstat Reclaim Statistics: vmscan Direct reclaims 2128 1460 Direct reclaim pages scanned 2284822 1496067 Direct reclaim pages reclaimed 148919 110937 Kswapd pages scanned 15450014 16202876 Kswapd pages reclaimed 8503697 8537897 Kswapd low wmark quickly 3100 3397 Kswapd high wmark quickly 1860 7243 Kswapd skip congestion_wait 708 801 Pages activated 9635 9573 Pages deactivated 1432 1271 Pages written 223 1130 Total pages scanned 17734836 17698943 Total pages reclaimed 8652616 8648834 %age total pages scanned/reclaimed 48.79% 48.87% %age total pages scanned/written 0.00% 0.01% proc vmstat: Faults Major Faults 165 221 Minor Faults 9655785 9656506 Page ins 3880 7228 Page outs 37692940 37480076 Swap ins 0 69 Swap outs 19 15 Again fewer pages are scanned and reclaimed as expected and this time the test completed faster. Note that kswapd is hitting its watermarks faster (low and high wmark quickly) which I expect is due to kswapd reclaiming fewer pages. I also ran fs-mark, iozone and sysbench but there is nothing interesting to report in the figures. Performance is not significantly changed and the reclaim statistics look reasonable. Tgis patch: When the allocator enters its slow path, kswapd is woken up to balance the node. It continues working until all zones within the node are balanced. For order-0 allocations, this makes perfect sense but for higher orders it can have unintended side-effects. If the zone sizes are imbalanced, kswapd may reclaim heavily within a smaller zone discarding an excessive number of pages. The user-visible behaviour is that kswapd is awake and reclaiming even though plenty of pages are free from a suitable zone. This patch alters the "balance" logic for high-order reclaim allowing kswapd to stop if any suitable zone becomes balanced to reduce the number of pages it reclaims from other zones. kswapd still tries to ensure that order-0 watermarks for all zones are met before sleeping. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Reviewed-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@mgebm.net> Cc: Simon Kirby <sim@hostway.ca> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: vmscan: rename lumpy_mode to reclaim_modeMel Gorman
With compaction being used instead of lumpy reclaim, the name lumpy_mode and associated variables is a bit misleading. Rename lumpy_mode to reclaim_mode which is a better fit. There is no functional change. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: migration: allow migration to operate asynchronously and avoid ↵Mel Gorman
synchronous compaction in the faster path Migration synchronously waits for writeback if the initial passes fails. Callers of memory compaction do not necessarily want this behaviour if the caller is latency sensitive or expects that synchronous migration is not going to have a significantly better success rate. This patch adds a sync parameter to migrate_pages() allowing the caller to indicate if wait_on_page_writeback() is allowed within migration or not. For reclaim/compaction, try_to_compact_pages() is first called asynchronously, direct reclaim runs and then try_to_compact_pages() is called synchronously as there is a greater expectation that it'll succeed. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build/merge fix] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: vmscan: reclaim order-0 and use compaction instead of lumpy reclaimMel Gorman
Lumpy reclaim is disruptive. It reclaims a large number of pages and ignores the age of the pages it reclaims. This can incur significant stalls and potentially increase the number of major faults. Compaction has reached the point where it is considered reasonably stable (meaning it has passed a lot of testing) and is a potential candidate for displacing lumpy reclaim. This patch introduces an alternative to lumpy reclaim whe compaction is available called reclaim/compaction. The basic operation is very simple - instead of selecting a contiguous range of pages to reclaim, a number of order-0 pages are reclaimed and then compaction is later by either kswapd (compact_zone_order()) or direct compaction (__alloc_pages_direct_compact()). [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix build] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: use conventional task_struct naming] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: vmscan: convert lumpy_mode into a bitmaskMel Gorman
Currently lumpy_mode is an enum and determines if lumpy reclaim is off, syncronous or asyncronous. In preparation for using compaction instead of lumpy reclaim, this patch converts the flags into a bitmap. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13vmscan: factor out kswapd sleeping logic from kswapd()KOSAKI Motohiro
Currently, kswapd() has deep nesting and is slightly hard to read. Clean this up. Signed-off-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: vmstat: use a single setter function and callback for adjusting percpu ↵Mel Gorman
thresholds reduce_pgdat_percpu_threshold() and restore_pgdat_percpu_threshold() exist to adjust the per-cpu vmstat thresholds while kswapd is awake to avoid errors due to counter drift. The functions duplicate some code so this patch replaces them with a single set_pgdat_percpu_threshold() that takes a callback function to calculate the desired threshold as a parameter. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: readability tweak] [kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: set_pgdat_percpu_threshold(): don't use for_each_online_cpu] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13mm: page allocator: adjust the per-cpu counter threshold when memory is lowMel Gorman
Commit aa45484 ("calculate a better estimate of NR_FREE_PAGES when memory is low") noted that watermarks were based on the vmstat NR_FREE_PAGES. To avoid synchronization overhead, these counters are maintained on a per-cpu basis and drained both periodically and when a threshold is above a threshold. On large CPU systems, the difference between the estimate and real value of NR_FREE_PAGES can be very high. The system can get into a case where pages are allocated far below the min watermark potentially causing livelock issues. The commit solved the problem by taking a better reading of NR_FREE_PAGES when memory was low. Unfortately, as reported by Shaohua Li this accurate reading can consume a large amount of CPU time on systems with many sockets due to cache line bouncing. This patch takes a different approach. For large machines where counter drift might be unsafe and while kswapd is awake, the per-cpu thresholds for the target pgdat are reduced to limit the level of drift to what should be a safe level. This incurs a performance penalty in heavy memory pressure by a factor that depends on the workload and the machine but the machine should function correctly without accidentally exhausting all memory on a node. There is an additional cost when kswapd wakes and sleeps but the event is not expected to be frequent - in Shaohua's test case, there was one recorded sleep and wake event at least. To ensure that kswapd wakes up, a safe version of zone_watermark_ok() is introduced that takes a more accurate reading of NR_FREE_PAGES when called from wakeup_kswapd, when deciding whether it is really safe to go back to sleep in sleeping_prematurely() and when deciding if a zone is really balanced or not in balance_pgdat(). We are still using an expensive function but limiting how often it is called. When the test case is reproduced, the time spent in the watermark functions is reduced. The following report is on the percentage of time spent cumulatively spent in the functions zone_nr_free_pages(), zone_watermark_ok(), __zone_watermark_ok(), zone_watermark_ok_safe(), zone_page_state_snapshot(), zone_page_state(). vanilla 11.6615% disable-threshold 0.2584% David said: : We had to pull aa454840 "mm: page allocator: calculate a better estimate : of NR_FREE_PAGES when memory is low and kswapd is awake" from 2.6.36 : internally because tests showed that it would cause the machine to stall : as the result of heavy kswapd activity. I merged it back with this fix as : it is pending in the -mm tree and it solves the issue we were seeing, so I : definitely think this should be pushed to -stable (and I would seriously : consider it for 2.6.37 inclusion even at this late date). Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reported-by: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com> Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Tested-by: Nicolas Bareil <nico@chdir.org> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Kyle McMartin <kyle@mcmartin.ca> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> [2.6.37.1, 2.6.36.x] Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>