Date:	Wed, 29 Jul 2015 08:55:01 -0700
From:	Andres Lagar-Cavilla <andreslc@...gle.com>
To:	Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov@...allels.com>
Cc:	Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>,
	Raghavendra K T <raghavendra.kt@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
	Greg Thelen <gthelen@...gle.com>,
	Michel Lespinasse <walken@...gle.com>,
	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
	Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@...allels.com>,
	Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@...nvz.org>,
	Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>, linux-api@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-doc@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	cgroups@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH -mm v9 0/8] idle memory tracking

On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 8:28 AM, Vladimir Davydov
<vdavydov@...allels.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 04:26:19PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
>> On Wed 29-07-15 16:59:07, Vladimir Davydov wrote:
>> > On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 02:36:30PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
>> > > On Sun 19-07-15 15:31:09, Vladimir Davydov wrote:
>> > > [...]
>> > > > ---- USER API ----
>> > > >
>> > > > The user API consists of two new proc files:
>> > >
>> > > I was thinking about this for a while. I dislike the interface.  It is
>> > > quite awkward to use - e.g. you have to read the full memory to check a
>> > > single memcg idleness. This might turn out being a problem especially on
>> > > large machines.
>> >
>> > Yes, with this API estimating the wss of a single memory cgroup will
>> > cost almost as much as doing this for the whole system.
>> >
>> > Come to think of it, does anyone really need to estimate idleness of one
>> > particular cgroup?

You can always adorn memcg with a boolean, trivially configurable from
user-space, and have all the idle computation paths skip the code if
memcg->dont_care_about_idle

>>
>> It is certainly interesting for setting the low limit.
>

Valuable, IMHO

> Yes, but IMO there is no point in setting the low limit for one
> particular cgroup w/o considering what's going on with the rest of the
> system.
>

Probably worth more fleshing out. Why not? Because global reclaim can
execute in any given context, so a noisy neighbor hurts all?

>>
>> > If we are doing this for finding an optimal memcg
>> > limits configuration or while considering a load move within a cluster
>> > (which I think are the primary use cases for the feature), we must do it
>> > system-wide to see the whole picture.
>> >
>> > > It also provides a very low level information (per-pfn idleness) which
>> > > is inherently racy. Does anybody really require this level of detail?
>> >

It's inherently racy for antagonist workloads, but a lot of workloads
are very stable.

>> > Well, one might want to do it per-process, obtaining PFNs from
>> > /proc/pid/pagemap.
>>
>> Sure once the interface is exported you can do whatever ;) But my
>> question is whether any real usecase _requires_ it.
>
> I only know/care about my use case, which is memcg configuration, but I
> want to make the API as reusable as possible.
>
>>
>> > > I would assume that most users are interested only in a single number
>> > > which tells the idleness of the system/memcg.
>> >
>> > Yes, that's what I need it for - estimating containers' wss for setting
>> > their limits accordingly.
>>
>> So why don't we export the single per memcg and global knobs then?
>> This would have few advantages. First of all it would be much easier to
>> use, you wouldn't have to export memcg ids and finally the implementation
>> could be changed without any user visible changes (e.g. lru vs. pfn walks),
>> potential caching and who knows what. In other words. Michel had a
>> single number interface AFAIR, what was the primary reason to move away
>> from that API?
>
> Because there is too much to be taken care of in the kernel with such an
> approach and chances are high that it won't satisfy everyone. What
> should the scan period be equal too? Knob. How many kthreads do we want?
> Knob. I want to keep history for last N intervals (this was a part of
> Michel's implementation), what should N be equal to? Knob. I want to be
> able to choose between an instant scan and a scan distributed in time.
> Knob. I want to see stats for anon/locked/file/dirty memory separately,
> please add them to the API. You see the scale of the problem with doing
> it in the kernel?
>
> The API this patch set introduces is simple and fair. It only defines
> what "idle" flag mean and gives you a way to flip it. That's it. You
> wanna history? DIY. You wanna periodic scans? DIY. Etc.
>

FTR I'm happy that the subtle internals are built with this patchset,
and the DIY is very appealing.

Andres

>>
>> > > Well, you have mentioned a per-process reclaim but I am quite
>> > > skeptical about this.
>> >
>> > This is what Minchan mentioned initially. Personally, I'm not going to
>> > use it per-process, but I wouldn't rule out this use case either.
>>
>> Considering how many times we have been bitten by too broad interfaces I
>> would rather be conservative.
>
> I consider an API "broad" when it tries to do a lot of different things.
> sys_prctl is a good example of a broad API.
>
> /proc/kpageidle is not broad, because it does just one thing (I hope it
> does it good :). If we attempted to implement the scanner in the kernel
> with all those tunables I mentioned above, then we would get a broad API
> IMO.
>
>>
>> > > I guess the primary reason to rely on the pfn rather than the LRU walk,
>> > > which would be more targeted (especially for memcg cases), is that we
>> > > cannot hold lru lock for the whole LRU walk and we cannot continue
>> > > walking after the lock is dropped. Maybe we can try to address that
>> > > instead? I do not think this is easy to achieve but have you considered
>> > > that as an option?
>> >
>> > Yes, I have, and I've come to a conclusion it's not doable, because LRU
>> > lists can be constantly rotating at an arbitrary rate. If you have an
>> > idea in mind how this could be done, please share.
>>
>> Yes this is really tricky with the current LRU implementation. I
>> was playing with some ideas (do some checkpoints on the way) but
>> none of them was really working out on a busy systems. But the LRU
>> implementation might change in the future.
>
> It might. Then we could come up with a new /proc or /sys file which
> would do the same as /proc/kpageidle, but on per LRU^w whatever-it-is
> basis, and give people a choice which one to use.
>
>> I didn't mean this as a hard requirement it just sounds that the
>> current implementation restrictions shape the user visible API which
>> is a good sign to think twice about it.
>
> Agree. That's why we are discussing it now :-)
>
>>
>> > Speaking of LRU-vs-PFN walk, iterating over PFNs has its own advantages:
>> >  - You can distribute a walk in time to avoid CPU bursts.
>>
>> This would make the information even more volatile. I am not sure how
>> helpful it would be in the end.
>
> If you do it periodically, it is quite accurate.
>
>>
>> >  - You are free to parallelize the scanner as you wish to decrease the
>> >    scan time.
>>
>> This is true but you could argue similar with per-node/lru threads if this
>> was implemented in the kernel and really needed. I am not sure it would
>> be really needed though. I would expect this would be a low priority
>> thing.
>
> But if you needed it one day, you'd have to extend the kernel API. With
> /proc/kpageidle, you just go and fix your program.
>
> Thanks,
> Vladimir



-- 
Andres Lagar-Cavilla | Google Kernel Team | andreslc@...gle.com
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