Date:   Wed, 20 Jun 2018 11:18:12 -0400
From:   Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
Cc:     linux-mm@...ck.org, Greg Thelen <gthelen@...gle.com>,
        Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@...gle.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] memcg, oom: move out_of_memory back to the charge
 path

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 12:37:36PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>
> 
> 3812c8c8f395 ("mm: memcg: do not trap chargers with full callstack on OOM")
> has changed the ENOMEM semantic of memcg charges. Rather than invoking
> the oom killer from the charging context it delays the oom killer to the
> page fault path (pagefault_out_of_memory). This in turn means that many
> users (e.g. slab or g-u-p) will get ENOMEM when the corresponding memcg
> hits the hard limit and the memcg is is OOM. This is behavior is
> inconsistent with !memcg case where the oom killer is invoked from the
> allocation context and the allocator keeps retrying until it succeeds.
> 
> The difference in the behavior is user visible. mmap(MAP_POPULATE) might
> result in not fully populated ranges while the mmap return code doesn't
> tell that to the userspace. Random syscalls might fail with ENOMEM etc.
> 
> The primary motivation of the different memcg oom semantic was the
> deadlock avoidance. Things have changed since then, though. We have
> an async oom teardown by the oom reaper now and so we do not have to
> rely on the victim to tear down its memory anymore. Therefore we can
> return to the original semantic as long as the memcg oom killer is not
> handed over to the users space.
> 
> There is still one thing to be careful about here though. If the oom
> killer is not able to make any forward progress - e.g. because there is
> no eligible task to kill - then we have to bail out of the charge path
> to prevent from same class of deadlocks. We have basically two options
> here. Either we fail the charge with ENOMEM or force the charge and
> allow overcharge. The first option has been considered more harmful than
> useful because rare inconsistencies in the ENOMEM behavior is hard to
> test for and error prone. Basically the same reason why the page
> allocator doesn't fail allocations under such conditions. The later
> might allow runaways but those should be really unlikely unless somebody
> misconfigures the system. E.g. allowing to migrate tasks away from the
> memcg to a different unlimited memcg with move_charge_at_immigrate
> disabled.

This is more straight-forward than I thought it would be. I have no
objections to this going forward, just a couple of minor notes.

> @@ -1483,28 +1483,54 @@ static void memcg_oom_recover(struct mem_cgroup *memcg)
>  		__wake_up(&memcg_oom_waitq, TASK_NORMAL, 0, memcg);
>  }
>  
> -static void mem_cgroup_oom(struct mem_cgroup *memcg, gfp_t mask, int order)
> +enum oom_status {
> +	OOM_SUCCESS,
> +	OOM_FAILED,
> +	OOM_ASYNC,
> +	OOM_SKIPPED

Either SUCCESS & FAILURE, or SUCCEEDED & FAILED ;)

We're not distinguishing ASYNC and SKIPPED anywhere below, but I
cannot think of a good name to communicate them both without this
function making assumptions about the charge function's behavior.
So it's a bit weird, but probably the best way to go.

> +static enum oom_status mem_cgroup_oom(struct mem_cgroup *memcg, gfp_t mask, int order)
>  {
> -	if (!current->memcg_may_oom || order > PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER)
> -		return;
> +	if (order > PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER)
> +		return OOM_SKIPPED;
>  	/*
>  	 * We are in the middle of the charge context here, so we
>  	 * don't want to block when potentially sitting on a callstack
>  	 * that holds all kinds of filesystem and mm locks.
>  	 *
> -	 * Also, the caller may handle a failed allocation gracefully
> -	 * (like optional page cache readahead) and so an OOM killer
> -	 * invocation might not even be necessary.
> +	 * cgroup1 allows disabling the OOM killer and waiting for outside
> +	 * handling until the charge can succeed; remember the context and put
> +	 * the task to sleep at the end of the page fault when all locks are
> +	 * released.
> +	 *
> +	 * On the other hand, in-kernel OOM killer allows for an async victim
> +	 * memory reclaim (oom_reaper) and that means that we are not solely
> +	 * relying on the oom victim to make a forward progress and we can
> +	 * invoke the oom killer here.
>  	 *
> -	 * That's why we don't do anything here except remember the
> -	 * OOM context and then deal with it at the end of the page
> -	 * fault when the stack is unwound, the locks are released,
> -	 * and when we know whether the fault was overall successful.
> +	 * Please note that mem_cgroup_oom_synchronize might fail to find a
> +	 * victim and then we have rely on mem_cgroup_oom_synchronize otherwise
> +	 * we would fall back to the global oom killer in pagefault_out_of_memory
>  	 */
> +	if (!memcg->oom_kill_disable) {
> +		if (mem_cgroup_out_of_memory(memcg, mask, order))
> +			return OOM_SUCCESS;
> +
> +		WARN(!current->memcg_may_oom,
> +				"Memory cgroup charge failed because of no reclaimable memory! "
> +				"This looks like a misconfiguration or a kernel bug.");
> +		return OOM_FAILED;
> +	}
> +
> +	if (!current->memcg_may_oom)
> +		return OOM_SKIPPED;

memcg_may_oom was introduced to distinguish between userspace faults
that can OOM and contexts that return -ENOMEM. Now we're using it
slightly differently and it's confusing.

1) Why warn for kernel allocations, but not userspace ones? This
should have a comment at least.

2) We invoke the OOM killer when !memcg_may_oom. We want to OOM kill
in either case, but only set up the mem_cgroup_oom_synchronize() for
userspace faults. So the code makes sense, but a better name would be
in order -- current->in_user_fault?

>  	css_get(&memcg->css);
>  	current->memcg_in_oom = memcg;
>  	current->memcg_oom_gfp_mask = mask;
>  	current->memcg_oom_order = order;
> +
> +	return OOM_ASYNC;

In terms of code flow, it would be much clearer to handle the
memcg->oom_kill_disable case first, as a special case with early
return, and make the OOM invocation the main code of this function,
given its name.

> @@ -1994,8 +2024,23 @@ static int try_charge(struct mem_cgroup *memcg, gfp_t gfp_mask,
>  
>  	memcg_memory_event(mem_over_limit, MEMCG_OOM);
>  
> -	mem_cgroup_oom(mem_over_limit, gfp_mask,
> +	/*
> +	 * keep retrying as long as the memcg oom killer is able to make
> +	 * a forward progress or bypass the charge if the oom killer
> +	 * couldn't make any progress.
> +	 */
> +	oom_status = mem_cgroup_oom(mem_over_limit, gfp_mask,
>  		       get_order(nr_pages * PAGE_SIZE));
> +	switch (oom_status) {
> +	case OOM_SUCCESS:
> +		nr_retries = MEM_CGROUP_RECLAIM_RETRIES;
> +		oomed = true;
> +		goto retry;
> +	case OOM_FAILED:
> +		goto force;
> +	default:
> +		goto nomem;
> +	}
>  nomem:
>  	if (!(gfp_mask & __GFP_NOFAIL))
>  		return -ENOMEM;
> -- 
> 2.17.1
> 

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