linux-kernel - Re: [patch for-4.7] mm, compaction: prevent VM_BUG

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Date:	Tue, 5 Jul 2016 23:37:34 +0200
From:	Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>
To:	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>
Cc:	Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@....com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org, hughd@...gle.com,
	mgorman@...hsingularity.net, minchan@...nel.org,
	stable@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [patch for-4.7] mm, compaction: prevent VM_BUG_ON when
 terminating freeing scanner

On 07/05/2016 11:01 PM, David Rientjes wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Jun 2016, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> 
>>>  Note: I really dislike the low watermark check in split_free_page() and
>>>  consider it poor software engineering.  The function should split a free
>>>  page, nothing more.  Terminating memory compaction because of a low
>>>  watermark check when we're simply trying to migrate memory seems like an
>>>  arbitrary heuristic.  There was an objection to removing it in the first
>>>  proposed patch, but I think we should really consider removing that
>>>  check so this is simpler.
>>
>> There's a patch changing it to min watermark (you were CC'd on the series). We
>> could argue whether it belongs to split_free_page() or some wrapper of it, but
>> I don't think removing it completely should be done. If zone is struggling
>> with order-0 pages, a functionality for making higher-order pages shouldn't
>> make it even worse. It's also not that arbitrary, even if we succeeded the
>> migration and created a high-order page, the higher-order allocation would
>> still fail due to watermark checks. Worse, __compact_finished() would keep
>> telling the compaction to continue, creating an even longer lag, which is also
>> against your recent patches.
>>
> 
> I'm suggesting we shouldn't check any zone watermark in split_free_page(): 
> that function should just split the free page.
> 
> I don't find our current watermark checks to determine if compaction is 
> worthwhile to be invalid, but I do think that we should avoid checking or 
> acting on any watermark in isolate_freepages() itself.  We could do more 
> effective checking in __compact_finished() to determine if we should 
> terminate compaction, but the freeing scanner feels like the wrong place 
> to do it -- it's also expensive to check while gathering free pages for 
> memory that we have already successfully isolated as part of the 
> iteration.
> 
> Do you have any objection to this fix for 4.7?

No.

Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>

> Joonson and/or Minchan, does this address the issue that you reported?
>