Re: [PATCH 1/3] Reintroduce zone_reclaim_interval for when zone_reclaim() scans and fails to avoid CPU spinning at 100% on NUMA

From: KOSAKI Motohiro
Date: Tue Jun 09 2009 - 03:48:50 EST


Hi

> On NUMA machines, the administrator can configure zone_reclaim_mode that is a
> more targetted form of direct reclaim. On machines with large NUMA distances,
> zone_reclaim_mode defaults to 1 meaning that clean unmapped pages will be
> reclaimed if the zone watermarks are not being met. The problem is that
> zone_reclaim() can be in a situation where it scans excessively without
> making progress.
>
> One such situation is where a large tmpfs mount is occupying a large
> percentage of memory overall. The pages do not get cleaned or reclaimed by
> zone_reclaim(), but the lists are uselessly scanned frequencly making the
> CPU spin at 100%. The scanning occurs because zone_reclaim() cannot tell
> in advance the scan is pointless because the counters do not distinguish
> between pagecache pages backed by disk and by RAM. The observation in
> the field is that malloc() stalls for a long time (minutes in some cases)
> when this situation occurs.
>
> Accounting for ram-backed file pages was considered but not implemented on
> the grounds it would be introducing new branches and expensive checks into
> the page cache add/remove patches and increase the number of statistics
> needed in the zone. As zone_reclaim() failing is currently considered a
> corner case, this seemed like overkill. Note, if there are a large number
> of reports about CPU spinning at 100% on NUMA that is fixed by disabling
> zone_reclaim, then this assumption is false and zone_reclaim() scanning
> and failing is not a corner case but a common occurance
>
> This patch reintroduces zone_reclaim_interval which was removed by commit
> 34aa1330f9b3c5783d269851d467326525207422 [zoned vm counters: zone_reclaim:
> remove /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_interval] because the zone counters were
> considered sufficient to determine in advance if the scan would succeed.
> As unsuccessful scans can still occur, zone_reclaim_interval is still
> required.
>
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx
> ---
> Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt | 13 +++++++++++++
> include/linux/mmzone.h | 9 +++++++++
> include/linux/swap.h | 1 +
> kernel/sysctl.c | 9 +++++++++
> mm/vmscan.c | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
> 5 files changed, 54 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
> index c302ddf..f9b8db5 100644
> --- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
> @@ -52,6 +52,7 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
> - swappiness
> - vfs_cache_pressure
> - zone_reclaim_mode
> +- zone_reclaim_interval
>
>
> ==============================================================
> @@ -620,4 +621,16 @@ Allowing regular swap effectively restricts allocations to the local
> node unless explicitly overridden by memory policies or cpuset
> configurations.
>
> +================================================================
> +
> +zone_reclaim_interval:
> +
> +The time allowed for off node allocations after zone reclaim
> +has failed to reclaim enough pages to allow a local allocation.
> +
> +Time is set in seconds and set by default to 30 seconds.
> +
> +Reduce the interval if undesired off node allocations occur. However, too
> +frequent scans will have a negative impact on off-node allocation performance.
> +
> ============ End of Document =================================
> diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> index a47c879..f1f0fb2 100644
> --- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
> +++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> @@ -337,6 +337,15 @@ struct zone {
> atomic_long_t vm_stat[NR_VM_ZONE_STAT_ITEMS];
>
> /*
> + * timestamp (in jiffies) of the last zone_reclaim that scanned
> + * but failed to free enough pages. This is used to avoid repeated
> + * scans when zone_reclaim() is unable to detect in advance that
> + * the scanning is useless. This can happen for example if a zone
> + * has large numbers of clean unmapped file pages on tmpfs
> + */
> + unsigned long zone_reclaim_failure;
> +
> + /*
> * prev_priority holds the scanning priority for this zone. It is
> * defined as the scanning priority at which we achieved our reclaim
> * target at the previous try_to_free_pages() or balance_pgdat()
> diff --git a/include/linux/swap.h b/include/linux/swap.h
> index d476aad..6a71368 100644
> --- a/include/linux/swap.h
> +++ b/include/linux/swap.h
> @@ -224,6 +224,7 @@ extern long vm_total_pages;
>
> #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
> extern int zone_reclaim_mode;
> +extern int zone_reclaim_interval;
> extern int sysctl_min_unmapped_ratio;
> extern int sysctl_min_slab_ratio;
> extern int zone_reclaim(struct zone *, gfp_t, unsigned int);
> diff --git a/kernel/sysctl.c b/kernel/sysctl.c
> index b2970d5..cc0623c 100644
> --- a/kernel/sysctl.c
> +++ b/kernel/sysctl.c
> @@ -1192,6 +1192,15 @@ static struct ctl_table vm_table[] = {
> .extra1 = &zero,
> },
> {
> + .ctl_name = CTL_UNNUMBERED,
> + .procname = "zone_reclaim_interval",
> + .data = &zone_reclaim_interval,
> + .maxlen = sizeof(zone_reclaim_interval),
> + .mode = 0644,
> + .proc_handler = &proc_dointvec_jiffies,
> + .strategy = &sysctl_jiffies,
> + },

hmmm, I think nobody can know proper interval settings on his own systems.
I agree with Wu. It can be hidden.


> + {
> .ctl_name = VM_MIN_UNMAPPED,
> .procname = "min_unmapped_ratio",
> .data = &sysctl_min_unmapped_ratio,
> diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
> index d254306..ba211c1 100644
> --- a/mm/vmscan.c
> +++ b/mm/vmscan.c
> @@ -2272,6 +2272,13 @@ int zone_reclaim_mode __read_mostly;
> #define RECLAIM_SWAP (1<<2) /* Swap pages out during reclaim */
>
> /*
> + * Minimum time between zone_reclaim() scans that failed. Ordinarily, a
> + * scan will not fail because it will be determined in advance if it can
> + * succeeed but this does not always work. See mmzone.h
> + */
> +int zone_reclaim_interval __read_mostly = 30*HZ;
> +
> +/*
> * Priority for ZONE_RECLAIM. This determines the fraction of pages
> * of a node considered for each zone_reclaim. 4 scans 1/16th of
> * a zone.
> @@ -2390,6 +2397,11 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
> <= zone->min_slab_pages)
> return 0;
>
> + /* Do not attempt a scan if scanning failed recently */
> + if (time_before(jiffies,
> + zone->zone_reclaim_failure + zone_reclaim_interval))
> + return 0;
> +
> if (zone_is_all_unreclaimable(zone))
> return 0;
>
> @@ -2414,6 +2426,16 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
> ret = __zone_reclaim(zone, gfp_mask, order);
> zone_clear_flag(zone, ZONE_RECLAIM_LOCKED);
>
> + if (!ret) {
> + /*
> + * We were unable to reclaim enough pages to stay on node and
> + * unable to detect in advance that the scan would fail. Allow
> + * off node accesses for zone_reclaim_inteval jiffies before
> + * trying zone_reclaim() again
> + */
> + zone->zone_reclaim_failure = jiffies;

Oops, this simple assignment don't care jiffies round-trip.


> + }
> +
> return ret;
> }
> #endif
> --
> 1.5.6.5
>



--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/