Re: [PATCH v2 01/11] mm/vmstat: remove remote node draining

[David Hildenbrand]

On 09.02.23 16:01, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> Draining of pages from the local pcp for a remote zone was necessary
> since:
>
> "Note that remote node draining is a somewhat esoteric feature that is
> required on large NUMA systems because otherwise significant portions
> of system memory can become trapped in pcp queues. The number of pcp is
> determined by the number of processors and nodes in a system. A system
> with 4 processors and 2 nodes has 8 pcps which is okay. But a system
> with 1024 processors and 512 nodes has 512k pcps with a high potential
> for large amount of memory being caught in them."
>
> Since commit 443c2accd1b6679a1320167f8f56eed6536b806e
> ("mm/page_alloc: remotely drain per-cpu lists"), drain_all_pages() is able
> to remotely free those pages when necessary.

I'm a bit new to that piece of code, so sorry for the dummy questions. 
I'm staring at linux master,

(1) I think you're removing the single user of drain_zone_pages(). So we
    should remove drain_zone_pages() as well.

(2) drain_zone_pages() documents that we're draining the PCP
    (bulk-freeing them) of the current CPU on remote nodes. That bulk-
    freeing will properly adjust free memory counters. What exactly is
    the impact when no longer doing that? Won't the "snapshot" of some
    counters eventually be wrong? Do we care?

Describing the difference between instructed refresh of vmstat and 
"remotely drain per-cpu lists" in order to move free memory from the pcp 
to the buddy would be great.

Because removing this code here looks nice, but I am not 100% sure about 
the implications. CCing Mel as well.


> Signed-off-by: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Index: linux-vmstat-remote/include/linux/mmzone.h
> ===================================================================
> --- linux-vmstat-remote.orig/include/linux/mmzone.h
> +++ linux-vmstat-remote/include/linux/mmzone.h
> @@ -577,9 +577,6 @@ struct per_cpu_pages {
>   	int high;		/* high watermark, emptying needed */
>   	int batch;		/* chunk size for buddy add/remove */
>   	short free_factor;	/* batch scaling factor during free */
> -#ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
> -	short expire;		/* When 0, remote pagesets are drained */
> -#endif
>   
>   	/* Lists of pages, one per migrate type stored on the pcp-lists */
>   	struct list_head lists[NR_PCP_LISTS];
> Index: linux-vmstat-remote/mm/vmstat.c
> ===================================================================
> --- linux-vmstat-remote.orig/mm/vmstat.c
> +++ linux-vmstat-remote/mm/vmstat.c
> @@ -803,7 +803,7 @@ static int fold_diff(int *zone_diff, int
>    *
>    * The function returns the number of global counters updated.
>    */
> -static int refresh_cpu_vm_stats(bool do_pagesets)
> +static int refresh_cpu_vm_stats(void)
>   {
>   	struct pglist_data *pgdat;
>   	struct zone *zone;
> @@ -814,9 +814,6 @@ static int refresh_cpu_vm_stats(bool do_
>   
>   	for_each_populated_zone(zone) {
>   		struct per_cpu_zonestat __percpu *pzstats = zone->per_cpu_zonestats;
> -#ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
> -		struct per_cpu_pages __percpu *pcp = zone->per_cpu_pageset;
> -#endif
>   
>   		for (i = 0; i < NR_VM_ZONE_STAT_ITEMS; i++) {
>   			int v;
> @@ -826,44 +823,8 @@ static int refresh_cpu_vm_stats(bool do_
>   
>   				atomic_long_add(v, &zone->vm_stat[i]);
>   				global_zone_diff[i] += v;
> -#ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
> -				/* 3 seconds idle till flush */
> -				__this_cpu_write(pcp->expire, 3);
> -#endif
>   			}
>   		}
> -#ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
> -
> -		if (do_pagesets) {
> -			cond_resched();
> -			/*
> -			 * Deal with draining the remote pageset of this
> -			 * processor
> -			 *
> -			 * Check if there are pages remaining in this pageset
> -			 * if not then there is nothing to expire.
> -			 */
> -			if (!__this_cpu_read(pcp->expire) ||
> -			       !__this_cpu_read(pcp->count))
> -				continue;
> -
> -			/*
> -			 * We never drain zones local to this processor.
> -			 */
> -			if (zone_to_nid(zone) == numa_node_id()) {
> -				__this_cpu_write(pcp->expire, 0);
> -				continue;
> -			}
> -
> -			if (__this_cpu_dec_return(pcp->expire))
> -				continue;
> -
> -			if (__this_cpu_read(pcp->count)) {
> -				drain_zone_pages(zone, this_cpu_ptr(pcp));
> -				changes++;
> -			}
> -		}
> -#endif
>   	}

I think you can then also get rid of the "changes" local variable and do 
a "return fold_diff(global_zone_diff, global_node_diff);" directly.


--
Thanks,

David / dhildenb