linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/2] mm: memcg/slab: Don't create unfreeable slab

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Date:   Mon, 3 May 2021 13:21:19 -0400
From:   Waiman Long <llong@...hat.com>
To:     Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@...gle.com>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>
Cc:     Waiman Long <llong@...hat.com>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>,
        Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov.dev@...il.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>,
        Pekka Enberg <penberg@...nel.org>,
        David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
        Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@....com>,
        Roman Gushchin <guro@...com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Cgroups <cgroups@...r.kernel.org>, Linux MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] mm: memcg/slab: Don't create unfreeable slab

On 5/3/21 12:24 PM, Shakeel Butt wrote:
> On Mon, May 3, 2021 at 8:32 AM Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz> wrote:
>> On 5/3/21 4:20 PM, Waiman Long wrote:
>>> On 5/3/21 8:22 AM, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
>>>> On 5/2/21 8:07 PM, Waiman Long wrote:
>>>>> The obj_cgroup array (memcg_data) embedded in the page structure is
>>>>> allocated at the first instance an accounted memory allocation happens.
>>>>> With the right size object, it is possible that the allocated obj_cgroup
>>>>> array comes from the same slab that requires memory accounting. If this
>>>>> happens, the slab will never become empty again as there is at least one
>>>>> object left (the obj_cgroup array) in the slab.
>>>>>
>>>>> With instructmentation code added to detect this situation, I got 76
>>>>> hits on the kmalloc-192 slab when booting up a test kernel on a VM.
>>>>> So this can really happen.
>>>>>
>>>>> To avoid the creation of these unfreeable slabs, a check is added to
>>>>> memcg_alloc_page_obj_cgroups() to detect that and double the size
>>>>> of the array in case it happens to make sure that it comes from a
>>>>> different kmemcache.
>>>>>
>>>>> This change, however, does not completely eliminate the presence
>>>>> of unfreeable slabs which can still happen if a circular obj_cgroup
>>>>> array dependency is formed.
>>>> Hm this looks like only a half fix then.
>>>> I'm afraid the proper fix is for kmemcg to create own set of caches for the
>>>> arrays. It would also solve the recursive kfree() issue.
>>> Right, this is a possible solution. However, the objcg pointers array should
>>> need that much memory. Creating its own set of kmemcaches may seem like an
>>> overkill.
>> Well if we go that way, there might be additional benefits:
>>
>> depending of gfp flags, kmalloc() would allocate from:
>>
>> kmalloc-* caches that never have kmemcg objects, thus can be used for the objcg
>> pointer arrays
>> kmalloc-cg-* caches that have only kmemcg unreclaimable objects
>> kmalloc-rcl-* and dma-kmalloc-* can stay with on-demand
>> memcg_alloc_page_obj_cgroups()
>>
>> This way we fully solve the issues that this patchset solves. In addition we get
>> better separation between kmemcg and !kmemcg thus save memory - no allocation of
>> the array as soon as a single object appears in slab. For "kmalloc-8" we now
>> have 8 bytes for the useful data and 8 bytes for the obj_cgroup  pointer.
>>
> Yes this seems like a better approach.
>
OK, I will try to go this route then if there is no objection from others.

 From slabinfo, the objs/slab numbers range from 4-512. That means we 
need kmalloc-cg-{32,64,128,256,512,1k,2k,4k}. A init function to set up 
the new kmemcaches and an allocation function that use the proper 
kmemcaches to allocate from.

Cheers,
Longman