linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH V2] cgroup/rstat: Avoid thundering herd problem by kswapd across NUMA nodes

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Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2024 23:35:07 +0200
From: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <hawk@...nel.org>
To: Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@...gle.com>,
 "Christoph Lameter (Ampere)" <cl@...ux.com>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@...ux.dev>, tj@...nel.org,
 cgroups@...r.kernel.org, hannes@...xchg.org, lizefan.x@...edance.com,
 longman@...hat.com, kernel-team@...udflare.com, linux-mm@...ck.org,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH V2] cgroup/rstat: Avoid thundering herd problem by kswapd
 across NUMA nodes



On 26/06/2024 00.59, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 3:35 PM Christoph Lameter (Ampere) <cl@...ux.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 25 Jun 2024, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
>>
>>>> In my reply above, I am not arguing to go back to the older
>>>> stats_flush_ongoing situation. Rather I am discussing what should be the
>>>> best eventual solution. From the vmstats infra, we can learn that
>>>> frequent async flushes along with no sync flush, users are fine with the
>>>> 'non-determinism'. Of course cgroup stats are different from vmstats
>>>> i.e. are hierarchical but I think we can try out this approach and see
>>>> if this works or not.
>>>
>>> If we do not do sync flushing, then the same problem that happened
>>> with stats_flush_ongoing could occur again, right? Userspace could
>>> read the stats after an event, and get a snapshot of the system before
>>> that event.
>>>
>>> Perhaps this is fine for vmstats if it has always been like that (I
>>> have no idea), or if no users make assumptions about this. But for
>>> cgroup stats, we have use cases that rely on this behavior.
>>
>> vmstat updates are triggered initially as needed by the shepherd task and
>> there is no requirement that this is triggered simultaenously. We
>> could actually randomize the intervals in vmstat_update() a bit if this
>> will help.
> 
> The problem is that for cgroup stats, the behavior has been that a
> userspace read will trigger a flush (i.e. propagating updates). We
> have use cases that depend on this. If we switch to the vmstat model
> where updates are triggered independently from user reads, it
> constitutes a behavioral change.

I implemented a variant using completions as Yosry asked for:
 
https://lore.kernel.org/all/171943668946.1638606.1320095353103578332.stgit@firesoul/

--Jesper