Re: [PATCHSET] cgroup: simplify cgroup removal path

From: Glauber Costa
Date: Wed Oct 31 2012 - 09:49:43 EST


On 10/31/2012 08:22 AM, Tejun Heo wrote:
> Hello, guys.
>
> cgroup removal path is quite ugly. A lot of the ugliness comes from
> the weird design which allows ->pre_destroy() to fail and the feature
> to drain existing CSS reference counts before committing to removal.
> Both mean that it should be possible to roll-back cgroup destruction
> after some or all ->pre_destroy() invocations.
>
> This weird design has never really worked. To list a couple examples.
>
> * Some ->pre_destroy() implementations aren't side-effect free.
> Roll-back happens after a lot of state is already lost.
>
> * Some ->pre_destroy() implementations (naturally) assume that the
> cgroup being destroyed would stay quiescent between successful
> ->pre_destroy() and its destruction. Unfortunately, any operation
> can happen inbetween and the cgroup could be in a very different
> state by the time it actually gets destroyed.
>
> It's just such an unusual design which unnecessarily contains weird
> code path combinations which are tricky to hit, reproduce and expect.
> Moreover, the design's deficiencies attracts kludges on top as
> workarounds and we end up with stuff like cgroup_exclude_rmdir() and
> cgroup_release_and_wakeup_rmdir() which really make me want to cry.
>
> Now that memcg has moved away from failable ->pre_destroy(), we can do
> away with all these. I tested some basic operations and some corner
> cases but am still a bit scared. Would love to get acks from Li and
> memcg people.
>
> This patchset contains the following eight patches.
>
> 0001-cgroup-kill-cgroup_subsys-__DEPRECATED_clear_css_ref.patch
> 0002-cgroup-kill-CSS_REMOVED.patch
> 0003-cgroup-use-cgroup_lock_live_group-parent-in-cgroup_c.patch
> 0004-cgroup-deactivate-CSS-s-and-mark-cgroup-dead-before-.patch
> 0005-cgroup-remove-CGRP_WAIT_ON_RMDIR-cgroup_exclude_rmdi.patch
> 0006-memcg-make-mem_cgroup_reparent_charges-non-failing.patch
> 0007-hugetlb-do-not-fail-in-hugetlb_cgroup_pre_destroy.patch
> 0008-cgroup-make-pre_destroy-return-void.patch
>
> 0001-0002 remove now unused ->pre_destroy() failure handling and do
> follow-up simplification.
>
> 0003-0004 update removal path such that each ->pre_destroy() is
> guaranteed to be invoked once per removal and the cgroup being
> destroyed stays quiescent until destruction is complete.
>
> 0005 removes the scary CGRP_WAIT_ON_RMDIR mechanism.
>
> 0006-0008 are follow-up clean-ups. 0006 and 0007 are from Michal's
> patchset[1].
>
> This patchset is on top of
>
> v3.6 (a0d271cbfe)
> + [1] the first three patches of
> "memcg/cgroup: do not fail fail on pre_destroy callbacks" patchset
>
> and available in the following git branch.
>
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tj/cgroup.git review-cgroup-rmdir-updates
>
> Thanks.
>
> block/blk-cgroup.c | 3
> include/linux/cgroup.h | 41 -------
> kernel/cgroup.c | 256 +++++++++++--------------------------------------
> mm/hugetlb_cgroup.c | 11 --
> mm/memcontrol.c | 51 +--------
> 5 files changed, 75 insertions(+), 287 deletions(-)


The patches are quite straightforward, and you are basically throwing
useless code away...

The only think that drew my attention is that you are changing the
local_irq_save callsite to local_irq_disable. It shouldn't be a problem,
since this is never expected to be called in interrupt context.

Still... it makes me wonder if that disabled-interrupt block is still
needed? According to the changelogs, it was introduced in e7c5ec919 for
the css_tryget mechanism. But css_tryget itself will never scan
subsystems, so if we can no longer fail, we should be able to just ditch
it. Unless I am missing something

--
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/