Re: [PATCH] mm: check zone->all_unreclaimable in all_unreclaimable()

From: KOSAKI Motohiro
Date: Wed Mar 09 2011 - 01:17:11 EST


> On 03/08/2011 06:06 AM, KOSAKI Motohiro wrote:
> >>>> Hmm.. Although it solves the problem, I think it's not a good idea that
> >>>> depends on false alram and give up the retry.
> >>>
> >>> Any alternative proposals? We should get the livelock fixed if possible..
> >>
> >> I agree with Minchan and can't think this is a real fix....
> >> Andrey, I'm now trying your fix and it seems your fix for oom-killer,
> >> 'skip-zombie-process' works enough good for my environ.
> >>
> >> What is your enviroment ? number of cpus ? architecture ? size of memory ?
> >
> > me too. 'skip-zombie-process V1' work fine. and I didn't seen this patch
> > improve oom situation.
> >
> > And, The test program is purely fork bomb. Our oom-killer is not silver
> > bullet for fork bomb from very long time ago. That said, oom-killer send
> > SIGKILL and start to kill the victim process. But, it doesn't prevent
> > to be created new memory hogging tasks. Therefore we have no gurantee
> > to win process exiting and creating race.
>
> I think a live-lock is a bug, even if it's provoked by fork bomds.
>
> And now I want say some words about zone->all_unreclaimable. I think
> this flag is "conservative". It is set when situation is bad and it's
> unset when situation get better. If we have a small number of
> reclaimable pages, the situation is still bad. What do you mean, when
> say that kernel is alive? If we have one reclaimable page, is the kernel
> alive? Yes, it can work, it will generate many page faults and do
> something, but anyone say that it is more dead than alive.
>
> Try to look at it from my point of view. The patch will be correct and
> the kernel will be more alive.
>
> Excuse me, If I'm mistaken...

Hi,

Hmmm...
If I could observed your patch, I did support your opinion. but I didn't. so, now I'm
curious why we got the different conclusion. tommorow, I'll try to construct a test
environment to reproduce your system.

Unfortunatelly, zone->all_unreclamable is unreliable value while hibernation processing.
Then I doubt current your patch is enough acceptable. but I'm not against to make alternative
if we can observe the same phenomenon.

At minimum, I also dislike kernel hang up issue.

Thanks.

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