Re: [PATCH] f2fs: avoid deadlock in gc thread under low memory

From: Wu Yan
Date: Wed Apr 13 2022 - 07:20:26 EST


On 4/13/22 17:46, Michal Hocko wrote:
On Wed 13-04-22 16:44:32, Rokudo Yan wrote:
There is a potential deadlock in gc thread may happen
under low memory as below:

gc_thread_func
-f2fs_gc
-do_garbage_collect
-gc_data_segment
-move_data_block
-set_page_writeback(fio.encrypted_page);
-f2fs_submit_page_write
as f2fs_submit_page_write try to do io merge when possible, so the
encrypted_page is marked PG_writeback but may not submit to block
layer immediately, if system enter low memory when gc thread try
to move next data block, it may do direct reclaim and enter fs layer
as below:
-move_data_block
-f2fs_grab_cache_page(index=?, for_write=false)
-grab_cache_page
-find_or_create_page
-pagecache_get_page
-__page_cache_alloc -- __GFP_FS is set
-alloc_pages_node
-__alloc_pages
-__alloc_pages_slowpath
-__alloc_pages_direct_reclaim
-__perform_reclaim
-try_to_free_pages
-do_try_to_free_pages
-shrink_zones
-mem_cgroup_soft_limit_reclaim
-mem_cgroup_soft_reclaim
-mem_cgroup_shrink_node
-shrink_node_memcg
-shrink_list
-shrink_inactive_list
-shrink_page_list
-wait_on_page_writeback -- the page is marked
writeback during previous move_data_block call

This is a memcg reclaim path and you would have to have __GFP_ACCOUNT in
the gfp mask to hit it from the page allocator. I am not really familiar
with f2fs but I doubt it is using this flag.

On the other hand the memory is charged to a memcg when the newly
allocated page is added to the page cache. That wouldn't trigger the
soft reclaim path but that is not really necessary because even the
regular memcg reclaim would trigger wait_on_page_writeback for cgroup
v1.

Also are you sure that the mapping's gfp mask has __GFP_FS set for this
allocation? f2fs_iget uses GFP_NOFS like mask for some inode types.

All that being said, you will need to change the above call chain but it
would be worth double checking the dead lock is real.

Hi, Michal

1. The issue is occur when do monkey test in Android Device with 4GB RAM + 3GB zram, and memory cgroup v1 enabled.

2. full memory dump has caught when the issue occur and the dead lock has confirmed from dump. We can see the mapping->gfp_mask is 0x14200ca,
so both __GFP_ACCOUNT(0x1000000) and __GFP_FS(0x80) set

crash-arm64> struct inode.i_mapping 0xFFFFFFDFD578EEA0
i_mapping = 0xffffffdfd578f028,
crash-arm64> struct address_space.host,gfp_mask -x 0xffffffdfd578f028
host = 0xffffffdfd578eea0,
gfp_mask = 0x14200ca,

Thanks
yanwu