Re: [PATCH] mm: page_counter: mitigate consequences of a page_counter underflow

[Chris Down]

Johannes Weiner writes:
> When the unsigned page_counter underflows, even just by a few pages, a
> cgroup will not be able to run anything afterwards and trigger the OOM
> killer in a loop.
>
> Underflows shouldn't happen, but when they do in practice, we may just
> be off by a small amount that doesn't interfere with the normal
> operation - consequences don't need to be that dire.
>
> Reset the page_counter to 0 upon underflow. We'll issue a warning that
> the accounting will be off and then try to keep limping along.
>
> [ We used to do this with the original res_counter, where it was a
>  more straight-forward correction inside the spinlock section. I
>  didn't carry it forward into the lockless page counters for
>  simplicity, but it turns out this is quite useful in practice. ]
>
> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: Chris Down <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> ---
> mm/page_counter.c | 8 ++++++--
> 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/mm/page_counter.c b/mm/page_counter.c
> index c6860f51b6c6..7d83641eb86b 100644
> --- a/mm/page_counter.c
> +++ b/mm/page_counter.c
> @@ -52,9 +52,13 @@ void page_counter_cancel(struct page_counter *counter, unsigned long nr_pages)
> 	long new;
>
> 	new = atomic_long_sub_return(nr_pages, &counter->usage);
> -	propagate_protected_usage(counter, new);
> 	/* More uncharges than charges? */
> -	WARN_ON_ONCE(new < 0);
> +	if (WARN_ONCE(new < 0, "page_counter underflow: %ld nr_pages=%lu\n",
> +		      new, nr_pages)) {
> +		new = 0;
> +		atomic_long_set(&counter->usage, new);
> +	}
> +	propagate_protected_usage(counter, new);
> }
>
> /**
> --
> 2.31.1