Date:	Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:53:28 +0400
From:	Anton Vorontsov <anton.vorontsov@...aro.org>
To:	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@...fujitsu.com>,
	Arve Hjønnevåg <arve@...roid.com>
Cc:	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>, Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...e.de>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
	Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.cz>,
	John Stultz <john.stultz@...aro.org>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Android low memory killer vs. memory pressure notifications

Hello everyone,

Some background: Android apps never exit, instead they just save state
and become inactive, and only get killed when memory usage hits a
specific threshold. This strategy greatly improves user experience,
as "start-up" time becomes non-issue. There are several application
categories and for each category there is its own limit (e.g. background
vs. foreground app -- we never want to kill foreground tasks, but that's
details).

So, Android developers came with a Lowmemory killer driver, it receives
memory pressure notifications, and then kills appropriate tasks when
memory resources become low.

Some time ago there were a lot of discussions regarding this driver,
and it seems that people see different ways of how this should be
implemented.

Today I'd like to resurrect the discussion, and eventually come to a
solution (or, if there is a group of people already working on this,
please let me know -- I'd readily help with anything I could).

The last time the two main approaches were spoken out, which both assume
that kernel should not be responsible for killing tasks:

- Use memory controller cgroup (CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR) notifications from
  the kernel side, plus userland "manager" that would kill applications.

  The main downside of this approach is that mem_cg needs 20 bytes per
  page (on a 32 bit machine). So on a 32 bit machine with 4K pages
  that's approx. 0.5% of RAM, or, in other words, 5MB on a 1GB machine.

  0.5% doesn't sound too bad, but 5MB does, quite a little bit. So,
  mem_cg feels like an overkill for this simple task (see the driver at
  the very bottom).

- Use some new low memory notifications mechanism from the kernel side +
  userland manager that would react to the notifications and would kill
  the tasks.

  The main downside of this approach is that the new mechanism does
  not exist. :-) "Big iron" people happily use mem_cg notifications,
  and things like /dev/mem_notify died circa 2008 as there was too
  little interest in it. See http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/1/20/404


(There were also suggestions to integrate lowmemory killer functionality
into OOM killer, but I see little point in doing this as the OOM
killer and lowmemory killer have different "triggers": OOM killer is
a quite simple last-resort thing for the kernel, it is called from
the kernel allocators' fail paths, and, IIRC, it is even synchronous w/
GFP_NOFAIL. I don't think that there could be any code or ABI reuse.)

So, the main difference between current Android lowmemory killer and
the approaches above is that the "killer" function suggested to be
factored out to the userland code. This makes sense as it is userland
that is categorizing tasks-to-kill (in the current lowmemory killer
driver via controlling OOM adj value).

Personally I'd start thinking about the new [lightweight] notification
stuff, i.e. something without mem_cg's downsides. Though, I'm Cc'ing
Android folks so maybe they could enlighten us why in-kernel "lowmemory
manager" might be a better idea. Plus Cc'ing folks that I think might
be interested in this discussion.

Thanks!

p.s.

I'm inlining the android memory killer code down below, just for the
reference. It is quite small (and useful... though, currently only for
Android case).

- - - -
From: Arve Hjønnevåg <arve@...roid.com>
Subject: Android low memory killer driver

The lowmemorykiller driver lets user-space specify a set of memory thresholds
where processes with a range of oom_adj values will get killed. Specify the
minimum oom_adj values in /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/adj and the
number of free pages in /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree. Both
files take a comma separated list of numbers in ascending order.

For example, write "0,8" to /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/adj and
"1024,4096" to /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree to kill processes
with a oom_adj value of 8 or higher when the free memory drops below 4096 pages
and kill processes with a oom_adj value of 0 or higher when the free memory
drops below 1024 pages.

The driver considers memory used for caches to be free, but if a large
percentage of the cached memory is locked this can be very inaccurate
and processes may not get killed until the normal oom killer is triggered.

---
 mm/Kconfig           |    7 ++
 mm/Makefile          |    1 +
 mm/lowmemorykiller.c |  175 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 3 files changed, 183 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 mm/lowmemorykiller.c

diff --git a/mm/Kconfig b/mm/Kconfig
index 011b110..a2e7959 100644
--- a/mm/Kconfig
+++ b/mm/Kconfig
@@ -259,6 +259,12 @@ config DEFAULT_MMAP_MIN_ADDR
 	  This value can be changed after boot using the
 	  /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr tunable.
 
+config LOW_MEMORY_KILLER
+	bool "Low Memory Killer"
+	help
+	  The lowmemorykiller driver lets user-space specify a set of memory
+	  thresholds where processes will get killed.
+
 config ARCH_SUPPORTS_MEMORY_FAILURE
 	bool
 
diff --git a/mm/Makefile b/mm/Makefile
index 50ec00e..10fb4ff 100644
--- a/mm/Makefile
+++ b/mm/Makefile
@@ -47,6 +47,7 @@ obj-$(CONFIG_QUICKLIST) += quicklist.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE) += huge_memory.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR) += memcontrol.o page_cgroup.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_MEMORY_FAILURE) += memory-failure.o
+obj-$(CONFIG_LOW_MEMORY_KILLER)	+= lowmemorykiller.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_HWPOISON_INJECT) += hwpoison-inject.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK) += kmemleak.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK_TEST) += kmemleak-test.o
diff --git a/mm/lowmemorykiller.c b/mm/lowmemorykiller.c
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e51936
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mm/lowmemorykiller.c
@@ -0,0 +1,175 @@
+/*
+ * The lowmemorykiller driver lets user-space specify a set of memory thresholds
+ * where processes with a range of oom_adj values will get killed. Specify the
+ * minimum oom_adj values in /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/adj and the
+ * number of free pages in /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree. Both
+ * files take a comma separated list of numbers in ascending order.
+ *
+ * For example, write "0,8" to /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/adj and
+ * "1024,4096" to /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree to kill processes
+ * with a oom_adj value of 8 or higher when the free memory drops below 4096 pages
+ * and kill processes with a oom_adj value of 0 or higher when the free memory
+ * drops below 1024 pages.
+ *
+ * The driver considers memory used for caches to be free, but if a large
+ * percentage of the cached memory is locked this can be very inaccurate
+ * and processes may not get killed until the normal oom killer is triggered.
+ *
+ * Copyright (C) 2007-2008 Google, Inc.
+ *
+ * This software is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public
+ * License version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation, and
+ * may be copied, distributed, and modified under those terms.
+ *
+ * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+ * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+ * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
+ * GNU General Public License for more details.
+ *
+ */
+
+#include <linux/module.h>
+#include <linux/kernel.h>
+#include <linux/mm.h>
+#include <linux/oom.h>
+#include <linux/sched.h>
+#include <linux/notifier.h>
+
+static uint32_t lowmem_debug_level = 2;
+static int lowmem_adj[6] = {
+	0,
+	1,
+	6,
+	12,
+};
+static int lowmem_adj_size = 4;
+static size_t lowmem_minfree[6] = {
+	3 * 512,	/* 6MB */
+	2 * 1024,	/* 8MB */
+	4 * 1024,	/* 16MB */
+	16 * 1024,	/* 64MB */
+};
+static int lowmem_minfree_size = 4;
+
+#define lowmem_print(level, x...)			\
+	do {						\
+		if (lowmem_debug_level >= (level))	\
+			printk(x);			\
+	} while (0)
+
+static int lowmem_shrink(struct shrinker *s, struct shrink_control *sc)
+{
+	struct task_struct *p;
+	struct task_struct *selected = NULL;
+	int rem = 0;
+	int tasksize;
+	int i;
+	int min_adj = OOM_ADJUST_MAX + 1;
+	int selected_tasksize = 0;
+	int selected_oom_adj;
+	int array_size = ARRAY_SIZE(lowmem_adj);
+	int other_free = global_page_state(NR_FREE_PAGES);
+	int other_file = global_page_state(NR_FILE_PAGES) -
+						global_page_state(NR_SHMEM);
+
+	if (lowmem_adj_size < array_size)
+		array_size = lowmem_adj_size;
+	if (lowmem_minfree_size < array_size)
+		array_size = lowmem_minfree_size;
+	for (i = 0; i < array_size; i++) {
+		if (other_free < lowmem_minfree[i] &&
+		    other_file < lowmem_minfree[i]) {
+			min_adj = lowmem_adj[i];
+			break;
+		}
+	}
+	if (sc->nr_to_scan > 0)
+		lowmem_print(3, "lowmem_shrink %lu, %x, ofree %d %d, ma %d\n",
+			     sc->nr_to_scan, sc->gfp_mask, other_free, other_file,
+			     min_adj);
+	rem = global_page_state(NR_ACTIVE_ANON) +
+		global_page_state(NR_ACTIVE_FILE) +
+		global_page_state(NR_INACTIVE_ANON) +
+		global_page_state(NR_INACTIVE_FILE);
+	if (sc->nr_to_scan <= 0 || min_adj == OOM_ADJUST_MAX + 1) {
+		lowmem_print(5, "lowmem_shrink %lu, %x, return %d\n",
+			     sc->nr_to_scan, sc->gfp_mask, rem);
+		return rem;
+	}
+	selected_oom_adj = min_adj;
+
+	read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
+	for_each_process(p) {
+		struct mm_struct *mm;
+		struct signal_struct *sig;
+		int oom_adj;
+
+		task_lock(p);
+		mm = p->mm;
+		sig = p->signal;
+		if (!mm || !sig) {
+			task_unlock(p);
+			continue;
+		}
+		oom_adj = sig->oom_adj;
+		if (oom_adj < min_adj) {
+			task_unlock(p);
+			continue;
+		}
+		tasksize = get_mm_rss(mm);
+		task_unlock(p);
+		if (tasksize <= 0)
+			continue;
+		if (selected) {
+			if (oom_adj < selected_oom_adj)
+				continue;
+			if (oom_adj == selected_oom_adj &&
+			    tasksize <= selected_tasksize)
+				continue;
+		}
+		selected = p;
+		selected_tasksize = tasksize;
+		selected_oom_adj = oom_adj;
+		lowmem_print(2, "select %d (%s), adj %d, size %d, to kill\n",
+			     p->pid, p->comm, oom_adj, tasksize);
+	}
+	if (selected) {
+		lowmem_print(1, "send sigkill to %d (%s), adj %d, size %d\n",
+			     selected->pid, selected->comm,
+			     selected_oom_adj, selected_tasksize);
+		force_sig(SIGKILL, selected);
+		rem -= selected_tasksize;
+	}
+	lowmem_print(4, "lowmem_shrink %lu, %x, return %d\n",
+		     sc->nr_to_scan, sc->gfp_mask, rem);
+	read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
+	return rem;
+}
+
+static struct shrinker lowmem_shrinker = {
+	.shrink = lowmem_shrink,
+	.seeks = DEFAULT_SEEKS * 16
+};
+
+static int __init lowmem_init(void)
+{
+	register_shrinker(&lowmem_shrinker);
+	return 0;
+}
+
+static void __exit lowmem_exit(void)
+{
+	unregister_shrinker(&lowmem_shrinker);
+}
+
+module_param_named(cost, lowmem_shrinker.seeks, int, S_IRUGO | S_IWUSR);
+module_param_array_named(adj, lowmem_adj, int, &lowmem_adj_size,
+			 S_IRUGO | S_IWUSR);
+module_param_array_named(minfree, lowmem_minfree, uint, &lowmem_minfree_size,
+			 S_IRUGO | S_IWUSR);
+module_param_named(debug_level, lowmem_debug_level, uint, S_IRUGO | S_IWUSR);
+
+module_init(lowmem_init);
+module_exit(lowmem_exit);
+
+MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
-- 
1.7.7.3

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