Date:	Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:48:43 +0900
From:	Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>
To:	Anton Vorontsov <anton.vorontsov@...aro.org>
Cc:	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@...fujitsu.com>,
	Arve Hjønnevåg <arve@...roid.com>,
	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: Re: Android low memory killer vs. memory pressure notifications

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 06:53:28AM +0400, Anton Vorontsov wrote:
> 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:

Right.
Kernel should have just signal role when resource is not enough.
It is desirable that killing is role of user space.
The problem is accurate receiving signal time.
For example, Let assume A, B, C applications.

A application want to receive signal if system memory is below 4M
If A receive the signal, it is supposed to kill B.

1. memory pressure
2. kernel detect memory is under 4M
3. kernel signal to A
4. schedule in B
5. B consume lots of memory
6. OOM happens
7. OOM kills C and schedule A
8. A kill B

B and C is dead :(

It's not what we want.
 
> 
> - 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).

Agree.
Although current embedded system have enough memory, it is overkill that
enabling memcg for just memcg notification.

> 
> - 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

I like mem_notify if we can solve the problem I mentioned.

> 
> 
> (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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-- 
Kind regards,
Minchan Kim
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