Date:   Thu, 17 Nov 2016 12:44:09 -0800
From:   Doug Anderson <dianders@...omium.org>
To:     Mike Snitzer <snitzer@...hat.com>
Cc:     Alasdair Kergon <agk@...hat.com>,
        David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
        Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@...il.com>,
        Sonny Rao <sonnyrao@...omium.org>,
        Guenter Roeck <linux@...ck-us.net>, dm-devel@...hat.com,
        Shaohua Li <shli@...nel.org>, linux-raid@...r.kernel.org,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: dm: Avoid sleeping while holding the dm_bufio lock

Hi,

On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 12:28 PM, Mike Snitzer <snitzer@...hat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 17 2016 at  2:24pm -0500,
> Douglas Anderson <dianders@...omium.org> wrote:
>
>> We've seen in-field reports showing _lots_ (18 in one case, 41 in
>> another) of tasks all sitting there blocked on:
>>
>>   mutex_lock+0x4c/0x68
>>   dm_bufio_shrink_count+0x38/0x78
>>   shrink_slab.part.54.constprop.65+0x100/0x464
>>   shrink_zone+0xa8/0x198
>>
>> In the two cases analyzed, we see one task that looks like this:
>>
>>   Workqueue: kverityd verity_prefetch_io
>>
>>   __switch_to+0x9c/0xa8
>>   __schedule+0x440/0x6d8
>>   schedule+0x94/0xb4
>>   schedule_timeout+0x204/0x27c
>>   schedule_timeout_uninterruptible+0x44/0x50
>>   wait_iff_congested+0x9c/0x1f0
>>   shrink_inactive_list+0x3a0/0x4cc
>>   shrink_lruvec+0x418/0x5cc
>>   shrink_zone+0x88/0x198
>>   try_to_free_pages+0x51c/0x588
>>   __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x648/0xa88
>>   __get_free_pages+0x34/0x7c
>>   alloc_buffer+0xa4/0x144
>>   __bufio_new+0x84/0x278
>>   dm_bufio_prefetch+0x9c/0x154
>>   verity_prefetch_io+0xe8/0x10c
>>   process_one_work+0x240/0x424
>>   worker_thread+0x2fc/0x424
>>   kthread+0x10c/0x114
>>
>> ...and that looks to be the one holding the mutex.
>>
>> The problem has been reproduced on fairly easily:
>> 0. Be running Chrome OS w/ verity enabled on the root filesystem
>> 1. Pick test patch: http://crosreview.com/412360
>> 2. Install launchBalloons.sh and balloon.arm from
>>      http://crbug.com/468342
>>    ...that's just a memory stress test app.
>> 3. On a 4GB rk3399 machine, run
>>      nice ./launchBalloons.sh 4 900 100000
>>    ...that tries to eat 4 * 900 MB of memory and keep accessing.
>> 4. Login to the Chrome web browser and restore many tabs
>>
>> With that, I've seen printouts like:
>>   DOUG: long bufio 90758 ms
>> ...and stack trace always show's we're in dm_bufio_prefetch().
>>
>> The problem is that we try to allocate memory with GFP_NOIO while
>> we're holding the dm_bufio lock.  Instead we should be using
>> GFP_NOWAIT.  Using GFP_NOIO can cause us to sleep while holding the
>> lock and that causes the above problems.
>>
>> The current behavior explained by David Rientjes:
>>
>>   It will still try reclaim initially because __GFP_WAIT (or
>>   __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM) is set by GFP_NOIO.  This is the cause of
>>   contention on dm_bufio_lock() that the thread holds.  You want to
>>   pass GFP_NOWAIT instead of GFP_NOIO to alloc_buffer() when holding a
>>   mutex that can be contended by a concurrent slab shrinker (if
>>   count_objects didn't use a trylock, this pattern would trivially
>>   deadlock).
>>
>> Suggested-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Douglas Anderson <dianders@...omium.org>
>> ---
>> Note that this change was developed and tested against the Chrome OS
>> 4.4 kernel tree, not mainline.  Due to slight differences in verity
>> between mainline and Chrome OS it became too difficult to reproduce my
>> testing setup on mainline.  This patch still seems correct and
>> relevant to upstream, so I'm posting it.  If this is not acceptible to
>> you then please ignore this patch.
>>
>> Also note that when I tested the Chrome OS 3.14 kernel tree I couldn't
>> reproduce the long delays described in the patch.  Presumably
>> something changed in either the kernel config or the memory management
>> code between the two kernel versions that made this crop up.  In a
>> similar vein, it is possible that problems described in this patch are
>> no longer reproducible upstream.  However, the arguments made in this
>> patch (that we don't want to block while holding the mutex) still
>> apply so I think the patch may still have merit.
>>
>>  drivers/md/dm-bufio.c | 6 ++++--
>>  1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/drivers/md/dm-bufio.c b/drivers/md/dm-bufio.c
>> index b3ba142e59a4..3c767399cc59 100644
>> --- a/drivers/md/dm-bufio.c
>> +++ b/drivers/md/dm-bufio.c
>> @@ -827,7 +827,8 @@ static struct dm_buffer *__alloc_buffer_wait_no_callback(struct dm_bufio_client
>>        * dm-bufio is resistant to allocation failures (it just keeps
>>        * one buffer reserved in cases all the allocations fail).
>>        * So set flags to not try too hard:
>> -      *      GFP_NOIO: don't recurse into the I/O layer
>> +      *      GFP_NOWAIT: don't wait; if we need to sleep we'll release our
>> +      *                  mutex and wait ourselves.
>>        *      __GFP_NORETRY: don't retry and rather return failure
>>        *      __GFP_NOMEMALLOC: don't use emergency reserves
>>        *      __GFP_NOWARN: don't print a warning in case of failure
>> @@ -837,7 +838,8 @@ static struct dm_buffer *__alloc_buffer_wait_no_callback(struct dm_bufio_client
>>        */
>>       while (1) {
>>               if (dm_bufio_cache_size_latch != 1) {
>> -                     b = alloc_buffer(c, GFP_NOIO | __GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_NOMEMALLOC | __GFP_NOWARN);
>> +                     b = alloc_buffer(c, GFP_NOWAIT | __GFP_NORETRY |
>> +                                      __GFP_NOMEMALLOC | __GFP_NOWARN);
>>                       if (b)
>>                               return b;
>>               }
>> --
>> 2.8.0.rc3.226.g39d4020
>>
>
> I have one report of a very low-memory system hitting issues with bufio
> (in the context of DM-thinp, due to bufio shrinker) but nothing
> implicating alloc_buffer().
>
> In any case, I'm fine with your patch given that we'll just retry.  BUT
> spinning in __alloc_buffer_wait_no_callback() doesn't really change the
> fact that you're starved for memory.  It just makes this less visible
> right?  Meaning that you won't see hung task timeouts?  Or were you
> seeing these tasks manifest this back-pressure through other means?

It actually significantly increases responsiveness of the system while
in this state, so it makes a real difference.  I believe it actually
changes behavior because it (at least) unblocks kswapd.  In the bug
report I analyzed, I saw:

   kswapd0         D ffffffc000204fd8     0    72      2 0x00000000
   Call trace:
   [<ffffffc000204fd8>] __switch_to+0x9c/0xa8
   [<ffffffc00090b794>] __schedule+0x440/0x6d8
   [<ffffffc00090bac0>] schedule+0x94/0xb4
   [<ffffffc00090be44>] schedule_preempt_disabled+0x28/0x44
   [<ffffffc00090d900>] __mutex_lock_slowpath+0x120/0x1ac
   [<ffffffc00090d9d8>] mutex_lock+0x4c/0x68
   [<ffffffc000708e7c>] dm_bufio_shrink_count+0x38/0x78
   [<ffffffc00030b268>] shrink_slab.part.54.constprop.65+0x100/0x464
   [<ffffffc00030dbd8>] shrink_zone+0xa8/0x198
   [<ffffffc00030e578>] balance_pgdat+0x328/0x508
   [<ffffffc00030eb7c>] kswapd+0x424/0x51c
   [<ffffffc00023f06c>] kthread+0x10c/0x114
   [<ffffffc000203dd0>] ret_from_fork+0x10/0x40

I'm not an expert, but I believe that blocking swapd isn't a super
great idea and that if we unblock it (like my patch will) then that
can help alleviate memory pressure.


-Doug

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