From 426474c682e1670c2129fe09c23be895df98b026 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marcelo Tosatti Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2023 15:03:33 -0300 Subject: [PATCH] vmstat: allow_direct_reclaim should use zone_page_state_snapshot Patch series "fold per-CPU vmstats remotely", v7. This patch series addresses the following two problems: 1. A customer provided evidence indicating that a process was stalled in direct reclaim: - The process was trapped in throttle_direct_reclaim(). The function wait_event_killable() was called to wait condition allow_direct_reclaim(pgdat) for current node to be true. The allow_direct_reclaim(pgdat) examined the number of free pages on the node by zone_page_state() which just returns value in zone->vm_stat[NR_FREE_PAGES]. - On node #1, zone->vm_stat[NR_FREE_PAGES] was 0. However, the freelist on this node was not empty. - This inconsistent of vmstat value was caused by percpu vmstat on nohz_full cpus. Every increment/decrement of vmstat is performed on percpu vmstat counter at first, then pooled diffs are cumulated to the zone's vmstat counter in timely manner. However, on nohz_full cpus (in case of this customer's system, 48 of 52 cpus) these pooled diffs were not cumulated once the cpu had no event on it so that the cpu started sleeping infinitely. I checked percpu vmstat and found there were total 69 counts not cumulated to the zone's vmstat counter yet. - In this situation, kswapd did not help the trapped process. In pgdat_balanced(), zone_wakermark_ok_safe() examined the number of free pages on the node by zone_page_state_snapshot() which checks pending counts on percpu vmstat. Therefore kswapd could know there were 69 free pages correctly. Since zone->_watermark = {8, 20, 32}, kswapd did not work because 69 was greater than 32 as high watermark. 2. With a task that busy loops on a given CPU, the kworker interruption to execute vmstat_update is undesired and may exceed latency thresholds for certain applications. By having vmstat_shepherd flush the per-CPU counters to the global counters from remote CPUs. This is done using cmpxchg to manipulate the counters, both CPU locally (via the account functions), and remotely (via cpu_vm_stats_fold). Thanks to Aaron Tomlin for diagnosing issue 1 and writing the initial patch series. Performance details for the kworker interruption: oslat 1094.456862: sys_mlock(start: 7f7ed0000b60, len: 1000) oslat 1094.456971: workqueue_queue_work: ... function=vmstat_update ... oslat 1094.456974: sched_switch: prev_comm=oslat ... ==> next_comm=kworker/5:1 ... kworker 1094.456978: sched_switch: prev_comm=kworker/5:1 ==> next_comm=oslat ... The example above shows an additional 7us for the oslat -> kworker -> oslat switches. In the case of a virtualized CPU, and the vmstat_update interruption in the host (of a qemu-kvm vcpu), the latency penalty observed in the guest is higher than 50us, violating the acceptable latency threshold for certain applications. This patch (of 13): A customer provided evidence indicating that a process was stalled in direct reclaim: - The process was trapped in throttle_direct_reclaim(). The function wait_event_killable() was called to wait condition allow_direct_reclaim(pgdat) for current node to be true. The allow_direct_reclaim(pgdat) examined the number of free pages on the node by zone_page_state() which just returns value in zone->vm_stat[NR_FREE_PAGES]. - On node #1, zone->vm_stat[NR_FREE_PAGES] was 0. However, the freelist on this node was not empty. - This inconsistent of vmstat value was caused by percpu vmstat on nohz_full cpus. Every increment/decrement of vmstat is performed on percpu vmstat counter at first, then pooled diffs are cumulated to the zone's vmstat counter in timely manner. However, on nohz_full cpus (in case of this customer's system, 48 of 52 cpus) these pooled diffs were not cumulated once the cpu had no event on it so that the cpu started sleeping infinitely. I checked percpu vmstat and found there were total 69 counts not cumulated to the zone's vmstat counter yet. - In this situation, kswapd did not help the trapped process. In pgdat_balanced(), zone_wakermark_ok_safe() examined the number of free pages on the node by zone_page_state_snapshot() which checks pending counts on percpu vmstat. Therefore kswapd could know there were 69 free pages correctly. Since zone->_watermark = {8, 20, 32}, kswapd did not work because 69 was greater than 32 as high watermark. Change allow_direct_reclaim to use zone_page_state_snapshot, which allows a more precise version of the vmstat counters to be used. allow_direct_reclaim will only be called from try_to_free_pages, which is not a hot path. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230320180332.102837832@redhat.com Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230320180745.556821285@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Marcelo Tosatti Suggested-by: Michal Hocko Acked-by: Michal Hocko Cc: Aaron Tomlin Cc: Christoph Lameter Cc: Frederic Weisbecker Cc: Heiko Carstens Cc: Huacai Chen Cc: Michal Hocko Cc: "Russell King (Oracle)" Cc: Vlastimil Babka Cc: Peter Xu Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- mm/vmscan.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c index 98719e72b5e2..ebbc2265871d 100644 --- a/mm/vmscan.c +++ b/mm/vmscan.c @@ -6873,7 +6873,7 @@ static bool allow_direct_reclaim(pg_data_t *pgdat) continue; pfmemalloc_reserve += min_wmark_pages(zone); - free_pages += zone_page_state(zone, NR_FREE_PAGES); + free_pages += zone_page_state_snapshot(zone, NR_FREE_PAGES); } /* If there are no reserves (unexpected config) then do not throttle */ -- 2.50.1