linux-kernel - Re: use of shrinker in virtio balloon free page hinting

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Date:   Wed, 17 Jul 2019 16:10:47 +0200
From:   David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>
To:     "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>,
        Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@...il.com>
Cc:     wei.w.wang@...el.com, Nitesh Narayan Lal <nitesh@...hat.com>,
        kvm list <kvm@...r.kernel.org>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Yang Zhang <yang.zhang.wz@...il.com>, pagupta@...hat.com,
        Rik van Riel <riel@...riel.com>,
        Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@...cle.com>,
        lcapitulino@...hat.com, Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>, dan.j.williams@...el.com,
        Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@...ux.intel.com>
Subject: Re: use of shrinker in virtio balloon free page hinting

On 17.07.19 13:20, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> Wei, others,
> 
> ATM virtio_balloon_shrinker_scan will only get registered
> when deflate on oom feature bit is set.
> 
> Not sure whether that's intentional.  Assuming it is:
> 
> virtio_balloon_shrinker_scan will try to locate and free
> pages that are processed by host.
> The above seems broken in several ways:
> - count ignores the free page list completely
> - if free pages are being reported, pages freed
>   by shrinker will just get re-allocated again

Trying to answer your questions (not sure if I fully understood what you
mean)

virtio_balloon_shrinker_scan() will not be called due to inflation
requests (balloon_page_alloc()). It will be called whenever the system
is OOM, e.g., when starting a new application.

I assume you were expecting the shrinker getting called due to
balloon_page_alloc(). however, that is not the case as we pass
"__GFP_NORETRY".


To test, something like:

1. Start a VM with

-device virtio-balloon-pci,deflate-on-oom=true

2. Inflate the balloon, e.g.,

QMP: balloon 1024
QMP: info balloon
-> 1024

See how "MemTotal" in /proc/meminfo in the guest won't change

3. Run a workload that exhausts memory in the guest (OOM).

See how the balloon was automatically deflated

QMP: info balloon
-> Something bigger than 1024


Not sure if it is broken, last time I played with it, it worked, but
that was ~1-2 years ago.

-- 

Thanks,

David / dhildenb