linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] memcg: Add a new sysctl parameter for automatically setting memory.high

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Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2024 12:33:27 -0400
From: Waiman Long <longman@...hat.com>
To: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@...ux.dev>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>, Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>,
 Muchun Song <muchun.song@...ux.dev>,
 Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
 Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@...ux.dev>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 cgroups@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
 Alex Kalenyuk <akalenyu@...hat.com>, Peter Hunt <pehunt@...hat.com>,
 linux-doc@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] memcg: Add a new sysctl parameter for automatically
 setting memory.high

On 6/24/24 11:21, Roman Gushchin wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 23, 2024 at 04:52:00PM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
>> Correct some email addresses.
>>
>> On 6/23/24 16:45, Waiman Long wrote:
>>> With memory cgroup v1, there is only a single "memory.limit_in_bytes"
>>> to be set to specify the maximum amount of memory that is allowed to
>>> be used. So a lot of memory cgroup using tools and applications allow
>>> users to specify a single memory limit. When they migrate to cgroup
>>> v2, they use the given memory limit to set memory.max and disregard
>>> memory.high for the time being.
>>>
>>> Without properly setting memory.high, these user space applications
>>> cannot make use of the memory cgroup v2 ability to further reduce the
>>> chance of OOM kills by throttling and early memory reclaim.
>>>
>>> This patch adds a new sysctl parameter "vm/memory_high_autoset_ratio"
>>> to enable setting "memory.high" automatically whenever "memory.max" is
>>> set as long as "memory.high" hasn't been explicitly set before. This
>>> will allow a system administrator or a middleware layer to greatly
>>> reduce the chance of memory cgroup OOM kills without worrying about
>>> how to properly set memory.high.
>>>
>>> The new sysctl parameter will allow a range of 0-100. The default value
>>> of 0 will disable memory.high auto setting. For any non-zero value "n",
>>> the actual ratio used will be "n/(n+1)". A user cannot set a fraction
>>> less than 1/2.
> Hi Waiman,
>
> I'm not sure that setting memory.high is always a good idea (it comes
> with a certain cost, e.g. can increase latency), but even if it is,
> why systemd or similar userspace tools can't do this?

We actually have a OOM problem with OpenShift which is based on 
Kubernetes. AFAIK, the setting of memory.high is still in alpha for 
Kubernetes. So a memory cgroup is set up just by setting memory.max at 
the moment.

I also trace back the OOM problem to commit 14aa8b2d5c2e ("mm/mglru: 
don't sync disk for each aging cycle") in the MGLRU code. So setting 
memory.high automatically is one way to avoid premature OOM. That is the 
motivation behind this patch.

>
> I wonder what's special about your case if you do see a lot of OOMs
> which can be avoided by setting memory.high? Do you have a bursty workload?

In our case, the OOM kill can be triggered by writing a large data file 
that exceeds memory.max to a NFS mounted filesystem as long as there is 
enough free pages that the dirty_bytes/dirty_background_bytes mechanism 
isn't triggered.

Regards,
Longman