linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH 1/7] cgroup: rstat: only disable interrupts for the percpu lock

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Date:   Wed, 22 Mar 2023 21:29:46 -0700
From:   Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@...gle.com>
To:     Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@...gle.com>
Cc:     Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>, Josef Bacik <josef@...icpanda.com>,
        Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
        Zefan Li <lizefan.x@...edance.com>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>,
        Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@...ux.dev>,
        Muchun Song <muchun.song@...ux.dev>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Vasily Averin <vasily.averin@...ux.dev>,
        cgroups@...r.kernel.org, linux-block@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        bpf@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 1/7] cgroup: rstat: only disable interrupts for the
 percpu lock

On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 9:00 PM Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@...gle.com> wrote:
>
> Currently, when sleeping is not allowed during rstat flushing, we hold
> the global rstat lock with interrupts disabled throughout the entire
> flush operation. Flushing in an O(# cgroups * # cpus) operation, and
> having interrupts disabled throughout is dangerous.
>
> For some contexts, we may not want to sleep, but can be interrupted
> (e.g. while holding a spinlock or RCU read lock). As such, do not
> disable interrupts throughout rstat flushing, only when holding the
> percpu lock. This breaks down the O(# cgroups * # cpus) duration with
> interrupts disabled to a series of O(# cgroups) durations.
>
> Furthermore, if a cpu spinning waiting for the global rstat lock, it
> doesn't need to spin with interrupts disabled anymore.
>
> If the caller of rstat flushing needs interrupts to be disabled, it's up
> to them to decide that, and it should be fine to hold the global rstat
> lock with interrupts disabled. There is currently a single context that
> may invoke rstat flushing with interrupts disabled, the
> mem_cgroup_flush_stats() call in mem_cgroup_usage(), if called from
> mem_cgroup_threshold().
>
> To make it safe to hold the global rstat lock with interrupts enabled,
> make sure we only flush from in_task() contexts. The side effect of that
> we read stale stats in interrupt context, but this should be okay, as
> flushing in interrupt context is dangerous anyway as it is an expensive
> operation, so reading stale stats is safer.
>
> Signed-off-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@...gle.com>

Couple of questions:

1. What exactly is cgroup_rstat_lock protecting? Can we just remove it
altogether?
2. Are we really calling rstat flush in irq context?
3. The mem_cgroup_flush_stats() call in mem_cgroup_usage() is only
done for root memcg. Why is mem_cgroup_threshold() interested in root
memcg usage? Why not ignore root memcg in mem_cgroup_threshold() ?