Date:   Thu, 3 Nov 2022 15:15:54 -0600
From:   Yu Zhao <yuzhao@...gle.com>
To:     Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@...gle.com>
Cc:     Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
        Sergey Senozhatsky <senozhatsky@...omium.org>,
        Nhat Pham <nphamcs@...il.com>, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
        linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        ngupta@...are.org, sjenning@...hat.com, ddstreet@...e.org,
        vitaly.wool@...sulko.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/5] zsmalloc: Consolidate zs_pool's migrate_lock and
 size_class's locks

On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 2:47 PM Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@...gle.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 1:37 PM Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 03, 2022 at 11:10:47AM -0700, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> > < snip >
> >
> > > > > > > I am also worry about that LRU stuff should be part of allocator
> > > > > > > instead of higher level.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I'm sorry, but that's not a reasonable objection.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > These patches implement a core feature of being a zswap backend, using
> > > > > > standard LRU and locking techniques established by the other backends.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I don't disagree that it would nicer if zswap had a strong abstraction
> > > > > > for backend pages and a generalized LRU. But that is major surgery on
> > > > > > a codebase of over 6,500 lines. It's not a reasonable ask to change
> > > > > > all that first before implementing a basic feature that's useful now.
> > > > >
> > > > > With same logic, folks added the LRU logic into their allocators
> > > > > without the effort considering moving the LRU into upper layer.
> > > > >
> > > > > And then trend is still going on since I have seen multiple times
> > > > > people are trying to add more allocators. So if it's not a reasonable
> > > > > ask to consier, we couldn't stop the trend in the end.
> > > >
> > > > So there is actually an ongoing effort to do that. Yosry and I have
> > > > spent quite some time on coming up with an LRU design that's
> > > > independent from compression policy over email and at Plumbers.
> > > >
> > > > My concern is more about the order of doing things:
> > > >
> > > > 1. The missing writeback support is a gaping hole in zsmalloc, which
> > > >    affects production systems. A generalized LRU list is a good idea,
> > > >    but it's a huge task that from a user pov really is not
> > > >    critical. Even from a kernel dev / maintainer POV, there are bigger
> > > >    fish to fry in the zswap code base and the backends than this.
> > > >
> > > > 2. Refactoring existing functionality is much easier than writing
> > > >    generalized code that simultaneously enables new behavior. zsmalloc
> > > >    is the most complex of our backends. To make its LRU writeback work
> > > >    we had to patch zswap's ->map ordering to accomodate it, e.g. Such
> > > >    tricky changes are easier to make and test incrementally.
> > > >
> > > >    The generalized LRU project will hugely benefit from already having
> > > >    a proven writeback implementation in zsmalloc, because then all the
> > > >    requirements in zswap and zsmalloc will be in black and white.
> > > >
> > > > > > I get that your main interest is zram, and so this feature isn't of
> > > > > > interest to you. But zram isn't the only user, nor is it the primary
> > > > >
> > > > > I am interest to the feature but my interest is more of general swap
> > > > > layer to manage the LRU so that it could support any hierarchy among
> > > > > swap devices, not only zswap.
> > > >
> > > > I think we're on the same page about the longer term goals.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Yeah. As Johannes said, I was also recently looking into this. This
> > > can also help solve other problems than consolidating implementations.
> > > Currently if zswap rejects a page, it goes into swap, which is
> > > more-or-less a violation of page LRUs since hotter pages that are more
> > > recently reclaimed end up in swap (slow), while colder pages that were
> > > reclaimed before are in zswap. Having a separate layer managing the
> > > LRU of swap pages can also make sure this doesn't happen.
> >
> > True.
> >
> > >
> > > More broadly, making zswap a separate layer from swap enables other
> > > improvements such as using zswap regardless of the presence of a
> > > backend swapfile and not consuming space in swapfiles if a page is in
> > > zswap. Of course, this is a much larger surgery.
> >
> > If we could decouple the LRU writeback from zswap and supports
> > compression without backing swapfile, sounds like becoming more of
> > zram. ;-)
>
> That's a little bit grey. Maybe we can consolidate them one day :)
>
> We have been using zswap without swapfile at Google for a while

We do require swapfiles for zswap -- they can be truncated.

> this
> gives us the ability to reject pages that do not compress well enough
> for us, which I suspect zram would not support given that it is
> designed to be the final destination of the page. Also, having the
> same configuration and code running on machines whether or not they
> have a swapfile is nice, otherwise one would need to use zram if there
> is no swapfile and switch to zswap if there is one.
>
> >
> > >
> > > I am intending to spend more time looking further into this, but other
> > > things keep popping up :)
> >
> > Same with me. Thanks for looking it, Yosry!
>

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