linux-kernel - Re: 2.6.26-rc5-mm2 (swap

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Date:	Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:45:07 -0400
From:	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>
To:	Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>
Cc:	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, kernel-testers@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: 2.6.26-rc5-mm2 (swap_state.c:77)

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:15:54 +0100 (BST)
Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com> wrote:

> > I'm trying to make sense of all the splice code now
> > and will send fix as soon as I know how to fix this
> > problem in a nice way.
> 
> There's no need to make sense of all the splice code, it's just
> that it's doing add_to_page_cache_lru (on a page not marked as
> SwapBacked), then shmem and swap_state consistency relies on it
> as having been marked as SwapBacked.  Normally, yes, shmem_getpage
> is the one that allocates the page, but in this case it's already
> been done outside, awkward (and long predates loop's use of splice).
> 
> It's remarkably hard to correct the LRU of a page once it's been
> launched towards one.  Is it still on this cpu's pagevec?  Have we
> been preempted and it's on another cpu's pagevec?  If it's reached
> the LRU, has vmscan whisked it off for a moment, even though it's
> PageLocked?  Until now it's been that the LRUs are self-correcting,
> but these patches move away from that.
> 
> I don't know how to fix this problem in a nice way.  For the moment,
> to proceed with testing, I'm using the hack below.  But perhaps that
> screws things up for the other !mapping_cap_account_dirty filesystems
> e.g. ramfs, I just haven't tried them yet - nor shall in the next
> couple of days.

Yeah, it will break ramfs.  Also, we need to take care of
splice going in the opposite direction (moving a page from
SwapBacked to filesystem backed).

I guess we'll need per-mapping flags to help determine where
a page goes at add_to_page_cache_lru() time.

This does not remove our need for the page flags, because
those need to survive until the del_page_from_lru() call
in __page_cache_release(), by which time the page->mapping
will be long gone.

> Am I right to think that the memcontrol stuff is now all broken,
> because memcontrol.c hasn't yet been converted to the more LRUs?
> Certainly I'm now hanging when trying to run in a restricted memcg.

I believe memcontrol has been converted.  Of course, maybe
they changed some stuff under me that I didn't notice :(
 
> Unrelated fix to compiler warning and silly /proc/meminfo numbers
> below too, that one raises fewer questions!

I sent the fix for that one to Andrew already.  I believe
it's in his mmotm tree.

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