Re: [PATCH] fs, mm: account filp and names caches to kmemcg

[Johannes Weiner]

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 03:49:21PM -0700, Greg Thelen wrote:
> Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 09:00:57PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> >> On Wed 25-10-17 14:11:06, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> >> > "Safe" is a vague term, and it doesn't make much sense to me in this
> >> > situation. The OOM behavior should be predictable and consistent.
> >> > 
> >> > Yes, global might in the rarest cases also return -ENOMEM. Maybe. We
> >> > don't have to do that in memcg because we're not physically limited.
> >> 
> >> OK, so here seems to be the biggest disconnect. Being physically or
> >> artificially constrained shouldn't make much difference IMHO. In both
> >> cases the resource is simply limited for the consumer. And once all the
> >> attempts to fit within the limit fail then the request for the resource
> >> has to fail.
> >
> > It's a huge difference. In the global case, we have to make trade-offs
> > to not deadlock the kernel. In the memcg case, we have to make a trade
> > off between desirable OOM behavior and desirable meaning of memory.max.
> >
> > If we can borrow a resource temporarily from the ether to resolve the
> > OOM situation, I don't see why we shouldn't. We're only briefly
> > ignoring the limit to make sure the allocating task isn't preventing
> > the OOM victim from exiting or the OOM reaper from reaping. It's more
> > of an implementation detail than interface.
> >
> > The only scenario you brought up where this might be the permanent
> > overrun is the single, oom-disabled task. And I explained why that is
> > a silly argument, why that's the least problematic consequence of
> > oom-disabling, and why it probably shouldn't even be configurable.
> >
> > The idea that memory.max must never be breached is an extreme and
> > narrow view. As Greg points out, there are allocations we do not even
> > track. There are other scenarios that force allocations. They may
> > violate the limit on paper, but they're not notably weakening the goal
> > of memory.max - isolating workloads from each other.
> >
> > Let's look at it this way.
> >
> > There are two deadlock relationships the OOM killer needs to solve
> > between the triggerer and the potential OOM victim:
> >
> > 	#1 Memory. The triggerer needs memory that the victim has,
> > 	    but the victim needs some additional memory to release it.
> >
> > 	#2 Locks. The triggerer needs memory that the victim has, but
> > 	    the victim needs a lock the triggerer holds to release it.
> >
> > We have no qualms letting the victim temporarily (until the victim's
> > exit) ignore memory.max to resolve the memory deadlock #1.
> >
> > I don't understand why it's such a stretch to let the triggerer
> > temporarily (until the victim's exit) ignore memory.max to resolve the
> > locks deadlock #2. [1]
> >
> > We need both for the OOM killer to function correctly.
> >
> > We've solved #1 both for memcg and globally. But we haven't solved #2.
> > Global can still deadlock, and memcg copped out and returns -ENOMEM.
> >
> > Adding speculative OOM killing before the -ENOMEM makes things more
> > muddy and unpredictable. It doesn't actually solve deadlock #2.
> >
> > [1] And arguably that's what we should be doing in the global case
> >     too: give the triggerer access to reserves. If you recall this
> >     thread here: https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/6088511/
> >
> >> > > So the only change I am really proposing is to keep retrying as long
> >> > > as the oom killer makes a forward progress and ENOMEM otherwise.
> >> > 
> >> > That's the behavior change I'm against.
> >> 
> >> So just to make it clear you would be OK with the retry on successful
> >> OOM killer invocation and force charge on oom failure, right?
> >
> > Yeah, that sounds reasonable to me.
> 
> Assuming we're talking about retrying within try_charge(), then there's
> a detail to iron out...
> 
> If there is a pending oom victim blocked on a lock held by try_charge() caller
> (the "#2 Locks" case), then I think repeated calls to out_of_memory() will
> return true until the victim either gets MMF_OOM_SKIP or disappears.  So a force
> charge fallback might be a needed even with oom killer successful invocations.
> Or we'll need to teach out_of_memory() to return three values (e.g. NO_VICTIM,
> NEW_VICTIM, PENDING_VICTIM) and try_charge() can loop on NEW_VICTIM.

True. I was assuming we'd retry MEM_CGROUP_RECLAIM_RETRIES times at a
maximum, even if the OOM killer indicates a kill has been issued. What
you propose makes sense too.