Re: [patch 0/3] mm: improve page aging fairness between zones/nodes

From: Johannes Weiner
Date: Mon Jul 22 2013 - 13:01:27 EST


Hi Zlatko,

On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 06:48:52PM +0200, Zlatko Calusic wrote:
> On 19.07.2013 22:55, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> >The way the page allocator interacts with kswapd creates aging
> >imbalances, where the amount of time a userspace page gets in memory
> >under reclaim pressure is dependent on which zone, which node the
> >allocator took the page frame from.
> >
> >#1 fixes missed kswapd wakeups on NUMA systems, which lead to some
> > nodes falling behind for a full reclaim cycle relative to the other
> > nodes in the system
> >
> >#3 fixes an interaction where kswapd and a continuous stream of page
> > allocations keep the preferred zone of a task between the high and
> > low watermark (allocations succeed + kswapd does not go to sleep)
> > indefinitely, completely underutilizing the lower zones and
> > thrashing on the preferred zone
> >
> >These patches are the aging fairness part of the thrash-detection
> >based file LRU balancing. Andrea recommended to submit them
> >separately as they are bugfixes in their own right.
> >
>
> I have the patch applied and under testing. So far, so good. It
> looks like it could finally fix the bug that I was chasing few
> months ago (nicely described in your bullet #3). But, few more days
> of testing will be needed before I can reach a quality verdict.

I should have remembered that you talked about this problem... Thanks
a lot for testing!

May I ask for the zone layout of your test machine(s)? I.e. how many
nodes if NUMA, how big Normal and DMA32 (on Node 0) are.
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