linux-kernel - [ 11/41] vmscan: clear ZONE_CONGESTED for zone with good watermark

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Message-Id: <20120730172902.195869164@linuxfoundation.org>
Date:	Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:31:10 -0700
From:	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, stable@...r.kernel.org
Cc:	Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
	torvalds@...ux-foundation.org, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk, Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@...el.com>,
	Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>,
	Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@...il.com>
Subject: [ 11/41] vmscan: clear ZONE_CONGESTED for zone with good watermark

From: Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>

3.0-stable review patch.  If anyone has any objections, please let me know.

------------------

From: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@...el.com>

commit 439423f6894aa0dec22187526827456f5004baed upstream.

Stable note: Not tracked in Bugzilla. kswapd is responsible for clearing
	ZONE_CONGESTED after it balances a zone and this patch fixes a bug
	where that was failing to happen. Without this patch, processes
	can stall in wait_iff_congested unnecessarily. For users, this can
	look like an interactivity stall but some workloads would see it
	as sudden drop in throughput.

ZONE_CONGESTED is only cleared in kswapd, but pages can be freed in any
task.  It's possible ZONE_CONGESTED isn't cleared in some cases:

 1. the zone is already balanced just entering balance_pgdat() for
    order-0 because concurrent tasks free memory.  In this case, later
    check will skip the zone as it's balanced so the flag isn't cleared.

 2. high order balance fallbacks to order-0.  quote from Mel: At the
    end of balance_pgdat(), kswapd uses the following logic;

	If reclaiming at high order {
		for each zone {
			if all_unreclaimable
				skip
			if watermark is not met
				order = 0
				loop again

			/* watermark is met */
			clear congested
		}
	}

    i.e. it clears ZONE_CONGESTED if it the zone is balanced.  if not,
    it restarts balancing at order-0.  However, if the higher zones are
    balanced for order-0, kswapd will miss clearing ZONE_CONGESTED as
    that only happens after a zone is shrunk.  This can mean that
    wait_iff_congested() stalls unnecessarily.

This patch makes kswapd clear ZONE_CONGESTED during its initial
highmem->dma scan for zones that are already balanced.

Signed-off-by: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@...el.com>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>
Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@...il.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>

---
 mm/vmscan.c |    3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -2456,6 +2456,9 @@ loop_again:
 					high_wmark_pages(zone), 0, 0)) {
 				end_zone = i;
 				break;
+			} else {
+				/* If balanced, clear the congested flag */
+				zone_clear_flag(zone, ZONE_CONGESTED);
 			}
 		}
 		if (i < 0)


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