linux-kernel - Re: Kernel falls apart under light memory pressure (i.e. linking vmlinux)

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Date:	Tue, 17 May 2011 15:35:50 +0900
From:	Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@...il.com>
To:	Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com>
Cc:	Andrew Lutomirski <luto@....edu>, Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>,
	"linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Kernel falls apart under light memory pressure (i.e. linking vmlinux)

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 3:00 PM, Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 12:12:36PM -0400, Andrew Lutomirski wrote:
>> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com> wrote:
>> > On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 09:37:58AM +0800, Minchan Kim wrote:
>> >> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 2:43 AM, Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org> wrote:
>> >> > Copying back linux-mm.
>> >> >
>> >> >> Recently, we added following patch.
>> >> >> https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/4/26/129
>> >> >> If it's a culprit, the patch should solve the problem.
>> >> >
>> >> > It would be probably better to not do the allocations at all under
>> >> > memory pressure.  Even if the RA allocation doesn't go into reclaim
>> >>
>> >> Fair enough.
>> >> I think we can do it easily now.
>> >> If page_cache_alloc_readahead(ie, GFP_NORETRY) is fail, we can adjust
>> >> RA window size or turn off a while. The point is that we can use the
>> >> fail of __do_page_cache_readahead as sign of memory pressure.
>> >> Wu, What do you think?
>> >
>> > No, disabling readahead can hardly help.
>> >
>> > The sequential readahead memory consumption can be estimated by
>> >
>> >                2 * (number of concurrent read streams) * (readahead window size)
>> >
>> > And you can double that when there are two level of readaheads.
>> >
>> > Since there are hardly any concurrent read streams in Andy's case,
>> > the readahead memory consumption will be ignorable.
>> >
>> > Typically readahead thrashing will happen long before excessive
>> > GFP_NORETRY failures, so the reasonable solutions are to
>> >
>> > - shrink readahead window on readahead thrashing
>> >  (current readahead heuristic can somehow do this, and I have patches
>> >  to further improve it)
>> >
>> > - prevent abnormal GFP_NORETRY failures
>> >  (when there are many reclaimable pages)
>> >
>> >
>> > Andy's OOM memory dump (incorrect_oom_kill.txt.xz) shows that there are
>> >
>> > - 8MB   active+inactive file pages
>> > - 160MB active+inactive anon pages
>> > - 1GB   shmem pages
>> > - 1.4GB unevictable pages
>> >
>> > Hmm, why are there so many unevictable pages?  How come the shmem
>> > pages become unevictable when there are plenty of swap space?
>>
>> That was probably because one of my testcases creates a 1.4GB file on
>> ramfs.  (I can provoke the problem without doing evil things like
>> that, but the test script is rather reliable at killing my system and
>> it works fine on my other machines.)
>
> Ah I didn't read your first email.. I'm now running
>
> ./test_mempressure.sh 1500 1400 1
>
> with mem=2G and no swap, but cannot reproduce OOM.
>
> What's your kconfig?
>
>> If you want, I can try to generate a trace that isn't polluted with
>> the evil ramfs file.
>
> No, thanks. However it would be valuable if you can retry with this
> patch _alone_ (without the "if (need_resched()) return false;" change,
> as I don't see how it helps your case).

Yes. I was curious about that. The experiment would be very valuable.

In case of James, he met the problem again without need_resched.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/5/12/547.

But I am not sure what's exact meaning of 'livelock' he mentioned.
I expect he met softlockup, again.

Still I think the possibility that skip cond_resched spared in
vmscan.c is _very_ low. How come such softlockup happens?
So I am really curious about what's going on under my sight.

>
> @@ -2286,7 +2290,7 @@ static bool sleeping_prematurely(pg_data_t
> *pgdat, int order, long remaining,
>        * must be balanced
>        */
>       if (order)
> -               return pgdat_balanced(pgdat, balanced, classzone_idx);
> +               return !pgdat_balanced(pgdat, balanced, classzone_idx);
>       else
>               return !all_zones_ok;
>  }
>
> Thanks,
> Fengguang
>



-- 
Kind regards,
Minchan Kim
--
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