linux-kernel - Re: [RFC v1][PATCH]page_fault retry with NOPAGE

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Date:	Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:50:46 -0800
From:	Mike Waychison <mikew@...gle.com>
To:	Török Edwin <edwintorok@...il.com>
CC:	Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>, Ying Han <yinghan@...gle.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, akpm <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
	Rohit Seth <rohitseth@...gle.com>,
	Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC v1][PATCH]page_fault retry with NOPAGE_RETRY

Török Edwin wrote:
> On 2008-11-29 01:02, Mike Waychison wrote:
>> Nick Piggin wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 11:03:40AM -0800, Mike Waychison wrote:
>>>> Nick Piggin wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 01:28:41AM -0800, Mike Waychison wrote:
>>>>>> Török however identified mmap taking on the order of several
>>>>>> milliseconds due to this exact problem:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/9/12/185
>>>>> Turns out to be a different problem.
>>>>>
>>>> What do you mean?
>>> His is just contending on the write side. The retry patch doesn't help.
>>>
>> I disagree.  How do you get 'write contention' from the following
>> paragraph:
>>
>> "Just to confirm that the problem is with pagefaults and mmap, I dropped
>> the mmap_sem in filemap_fault, and then
>> I got same performance in my testprogram for mmap and read. Of course
>> this is totally unsafe, because the mapping could change at any time."
>>
>> It reads to me that the writers were held off by the readers sleeping
>> in IO.
> 
> It is true that I have a write/write contention too, but do_page_fault
> shows up too on lock_stat.
> 
> This is my guess at what happens:
> * filemap_fault used to sleep with mmap_sem held while waiting for the
> page lock.
> * the google patch avoids that, which is fine: if page lock can't be
> taken, it drops mmap_sem, waits, then retries the fault once
> * however after we acquired the page lock, mapping->a_ops->readpage is
> invoked, mmap_sem is NOT dropped here:
> 
>     error = mapping->a_ops->readpage(file, page);
>     if (!error) {
>         wait_on_page_locked(page);
> 
> If my understanding is correct ->readpage does the actual disk I/O, and
> it keeps the page locked, when the lock is released we know it has finished.
> So wait_on_page_locked(page)  holds mmap_sem locked for read during the
> disk I/O, preventing sys_mmap/sys_munmap from making progress.
> 
> I don't know how to prove/disprove my guess above, suggestions welcome.
> 
> Could the patch be changed to also release the mmap_sem after readpage,
> and before wait_on_page_locked?

Ya, my suspicion is that there is still some other code path where we 
are waiting on the locked page with mmap_sem still held.  Ying and I 
will take a closer look this week.
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