linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] mm: memcg: provide accurate stats for userspace reads

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Date:   Tue, 15 Aug 2023 17:23:36 -0700
From:   Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@...gle.com>
To:     Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@...gle.com>
Cc:     Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>, Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
        Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@...ux.dev>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Muchun Song <muchun.song@...ux.dev>, cgroups@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Ivan Babrou <ivan@...udflare.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: memcg: provide accurate stats for userspace reads

+Ivan

On Mon, Aug 14, 2023 at 5:51 PM Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@...gle.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 14, 2023 at 5:48 PM Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 14, 2023 at 05:39:15PM -0700, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> > > I believe dropping unified flushing, if possible of course, may fix
> > > both problems.
> >
> > Yeah, flushing the whole tree for every stat read will push up the big O
> > complexity of the operation. It shouldn't be too bad because only what's
> > updated since the last read will need flushing but if you have a really big
> > machine with a lot of constantly active cgroups, you're still gonna feel it.
> > So, yeah, drop that and switch the global lock to mutex and we should all be
> > good?
>
> I hope so, but I am not sure.
>
> The unified flushing was added initially to mitigate a thundering herd
> problem from concurrent in-kernel flushers (e.g. concurrent reclaims),
> but back then flushing was atomic so we had to keep the spinlock held
> for a long time. I think it should be better now, but I am hoping
> Shakeel will chime in since he added the unified flushing originally.
>
> We also need to agree on what to do about stats_flushing_threshold and
> flush_next_time since they're both global now (since all flushing is
> global).
>

I thought we already reached the decision on how to proceed here. Let
me summarize what I think we should do:

1. Completely remove the sync flush from stat files read from userspace.
2. Provide a separate way/interface to explicitly flush stats for
users who want more accurate stats and can pay the cost. This is
similar to the stat_refresh interface.
3. Keep the 2 sec periodic stats flusher.