Date:	Tue, 17 May 2011 09:42:30 +0200
From:	Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>
To:	Ying Han <yinghan@...gle.com>
Cc:	KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@...fujitsu.com>,
	Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@....nes.nec.co.jp>,
	Balbir Singh <balbir@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.cz>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@...il.com>,
	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@...fujitsu.com>,
	Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [rfc patch 4/6] memcg: reclaim statistics

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 05:20:31PM -0700, Ying Han wrote:
> On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 4:10 PM, Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:33:50PM -0700, Ying Han wrote:
> > > The stats for soft_limit reclaim from global ttfp have been merged in
> > > mmotm i believe as the following:
> > >
> > > "soft_direct_steal"
> > > "soft_direct_scan"
> > >
> > > I wonder we might want to separate that out from the other case where the
> > > reclaim is from the parent triggers its limit.
> >
> > The way I implemented soft limits in 6/6 is to increase pressure on
> > exceeding children whenever hierarchical reclaim is taking place.
> >
> > This changes soft limit from
> >
> >        Global memory pressure: reclaim from exceeding memcg(s) first
> >
> > to
> >
> >        Memory pressure on a memcg: reclaim from all its children,
> >        with increased pressure on those exceeding their soft limit
> >        (where global memory pressure means root_mem_cgroup and all
> >        existing memcgs are considered its children)
> >
> > which makes the soft limit much more generic and more powerful, as it
> > allows the admin to prioritize reclaim throughout the hierarchy, not
> > only for global memory pressure.  Consider one memcg with two
> > subgroups.  You can now prioritize reclaim to prefer one subgroup over
> > another through soft limiting.
> >
> > This is one reason why I think that the approach of maintaining a
> > global list of memcgs that exceed their soft limits is an inferior
> > approach; it does not take the hierarchy into account at all.
> >
> > This scheme would not provide a natural way of counting pages that
> > were reclaimed because of the soft limit, and thus I still oppose the
> > merging of soft limit counters.
> 
> The proposal we discussed during LSF ( implemented in the patch " memcg:
> revisit soft_limit reclaim on contention") takes consideration
> of hierarchical reclaim. The memcg is linked in the list if it exceeds the
> soft_limit, and the soft_limit reclaim per-memcg is calling
> mem_cgroup_hierarchical_reclaim().

It does hierarchical soft limit reclaim once triggered, but I meant
that soft limits themselves have no hierarchical meaning.  Say you
have the following hierarchy:

                root_mem_cgroup

             aaa               bbb

           a1  a2             b1  b2

        a1-1

Consider aaa and a1 had a soft limit.  If global memory arose, aaa and
all its children would be pushed back with the current scheme, the one
you are proposing, and the one I am proposing.

But now consider aaa hitting its hard limit.  Regular target reclaim
will be triggered, and a1, a2, and a1-1 will be scanned equally from
hierarchical reclaim.  That a1 is in excess of its soft limit is not
considered at all.

With what I am proposing, a1 and a1-1 would be pushed back more
aggressively than a2, because a1 is in excess of its soft limit and
a1-1 is contributing to that.

It would mean that given a group of siblings, you distribute the
pressure weighted by the soft limit configuration, independent of the
kind of hierarchical/external pressure (global memory scarcity or
parent hit the hard limit).

It's much easier to understand if you think of global memory pressure
to mean that root_mem_cgroup hit its hard limit, and that all existing
memcgs are hierarchically below the root_mem_cgroup.  Altough it is
technically not implemented that way, that would be the consistent
model.

My proposal is a generic and native way of enforcing soft limits: a
memcg hit its hard limit, reclaim from the hierarchy below it, prefer
those in excess of their soft limit.

While yours is special-cased to immediate descendants of the
root_mem_cgroup.

> The current "soft_steal" and "soft_scan" is counting pages being steal/scan
>  inside mem_cgroup_hierarchical_reclaim() w check_soft checking, which then
> counts pages being reclaimed because of soft_limit and also counting the
> hierarchical reclaim.

Yeah, I understand that.  What I am saying is that in my code,
everytime a hierarchy of memcgs is scanned (global memory reclaim,
target reclaim, kswapd or direct, it's all the same), a memcg that is
in excess of its soft limit is put more pressure on compared to its
siblings.

There is no stand-alone 'now, go reclaim soft limits' cycle anymore.
As such, it would be impossible to maintain that counter.
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