linux-kernel - [PATCH 4.20 71/92] Revert "mm: slowly shrink slabs with a relatively small number of objects"

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Message-Id: <20190218133501.533140116@linuxfoundation.org>
Date:   Mon, 18 Feb 2019 14:43:14 +0100
From:   Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        stable@...r.kernel.org, Dave Chinner <dchinner@...hat.com>,
        Wolfgang Walter <linux@...m.de>, Roman Gushchin <guro@...com>,
        Spock <dairinin@...il.com>, Rik van Riel <riel@...riel.com>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: [PATCH 4.20 71/92] Revert "mm: slowly shrink slabs with a relatively small number of objects"

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

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

From: Dave Chinner <dchinner@...hat.com>

commit a9a238e83fbb0df31c3b9b67003f8f9d1d1b6c96 upstream.

This reverts commit 172b06c32b9497 ("mm: slowly shrink slabs with a
relatively small number of objects").

This change changes the agressiveness of shrinker reclaim, causing small
cache and low priority reclaim to greatly increase scanning pressure on
small caches.  As a result, light memory pressure has a disproportionate
affect on small caches, and causes large caches to be reclaimed much
faster than previously.

As a result, it greatly perturbs the delicate balance of the VFS caches
(dentry/inode vs file page cache) such that the inode/dentry caches are
reclaimed much, much faster than the page cache and this drives us into
several other caching imbalance related problems.

As such, this is a bad change and needs to be reverted.

[ Needs some massaging to retain the later seekless shrinker
  modifications.]

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190130041707.27750-3-david@fromorbit.com
Fixes: 172b06c32b9497 ("mm: slowly shrink slabs with a relatively small number of objects")
Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@...hat.com>
Cc: Wolfgang Walter <linux@...m.de>
Cc: Roman Gushchin <guro@...com>
Cc: Spock <dairinin@...il.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@...riel.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
Cc: <stable@...r.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>

---
 mm/vmscan.c |   10 ----------
 1 file changed, 10 deletions(-)

--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -487,16 +487,6 @@ static unsigned long do_shrink_slab(stru
 		delta = freeable / 2;
 	}
 
-	/*
-	 * Make sure we apply some minimal pressure on default priority
-	 * even on small cgroups. Stale objects are not only consuming memory
-	 * by themselves, but can also hold a reference to a dying cgroup,
-	 * preventing it from being reclaimed. A dying cgroup with all
-	 * corresponding structures like per-cpu stats and kmem caches
-	 * can be really big, so it may lead to a significant waste of memory.
-	 */
-	delta = max_t(unsigned long long, delta, min(freeable, batch_size));
-
 	total_scan += delta;
 	if (total_scan < 0) {
 		pr_err("shrink_slab: %pF negative objects to delete nr=%ld\n",