Re: [-mm][PATCH 4/4] Add memrlimit controller accounting and control (v4)

[Paul Menage]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 12:03 AM, Balbir Singh
<balbir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>  I want to focus on this conclusion/assertion, since it takes care of
>  most of the locking related discussion above, unless I missed
>  something.
>
>  My concern with using mmap_sem, is that
>
>  1. It's highly contended (every page fault, vma change, etc)

But the only *new* cases of taking the mmap_sem that this would
introduce would be:

- on a failed vm limit charge
- when a task exit/exec causes an mm ownership change
- when a task moves between two cgroups in the memrlimit hierarchy.

All of these should be rare events, so I don't think the additional
contention is a worry.

>  2. It's going to make the locking hierarchy deeper and complex

Yes, potentially. But if the upside of that is that we eliminate a
lock/unlock on a shared lock on every mmap/munmap call, it might well
be worth it.

>  3. It's not appropriate to call all the accounting callbacks with
>    the mmap_sem() held, since the undo operations _can get_ complicated
>    at the caller.
>

Can you give an example?

>  I would prefer introducing a new lock, so that other subsystems are
>  not affected.
>

For getting the first cut of the memrlimit controller working this may
well make sense. But it would be nice to avoid it longer-term.

Paul
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