linux-kernel - [PATCH v3 3/3] mm/vmscan: don't demote if there is not enough free memory in the lower memory tier

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Message-ID: <20260108101535.50696-4-akinobu.mita@gmail.com>
Date: Thu,  8 Jan 2026 19:15:35 +0900
From: Akinobu Mita <akinobu.mita@...il.com>
To: akinobu.mita@...il.com
Cc: linux-cxl@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org,
	akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
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	hannes@...xchg.org,
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	mhocko@...nel.org,
	zhengqi.arch@...edance.com,
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	Liam.Howlett@...cle.com,
	vbabka@...e.cz,
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	surenb@...gle.com,
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Subject: [PATCH v3 3/3] mm/vmscan: don't demote if there is not enough free memory in the lower memory tier

On systems with multiple memory-tiers consisting of DRAM and CXL memory,
the OOM killer is not invoked properly.

Here's the command to reproduce:

$ sudo swapoff -a
$ stress-ng --oomable -v --memrate 20 --memrate-bytes 10G \
    --memrate-rd-mbs 1 --memrate-wr-mbs 1

The memory usage is the number of workers specified with the --memrate
option multiplied by the buffer size specified with the --memrate-bytes
option, so please adjust it so that it exceeds the total size of the
installed DRAM and CXL memory.

If swap is disabled, you can usually expect the OOM killer to terminate
the stress-ng process when memory usage approaches the installed memory
size.

However, if multiple memory-tiers exist (multiple
/sys/devices/virtual/memory_tiering/memory_tier<N> directories exist) and
/sys/kernel/mm/numa/demotion_enabled is true, the OOM killer will not be
invoked and the system will become inoperable, regardless of whether MGLRU
is enabled or not.

This issue can be reproduced using NUMA emulation even on systems with
only DRAM.  You can create two-fake memory-tiers by booting a single-node
system with "numa=fake=2 numa_emulation.adistance=576,704" kernel
parameters.

The reason for this issue is that memory allocations do not directly
trigger the oom-killer, assuming that if the target node has an underlying
memory tier, it can always be reclaimed by demotion.

So this change avoids this issue by not attempting to demote if the
underlying node has less free memory than the minimum watermark, and the
oom-killer will be triggered directly from memory allocations.

Signed-off-by: Akinobu Mita <akinobu.mita@...il.com>
---
v3:
- rebase to linux-next (next-20260108), where demotion target has changed
  from node id to node mask.

v2:
- describe reproducibility with !mglru in the commit log
- removed unnecessary consideration for scan control when checking demotion_nid watermarks

 mm/vmscan.c | 16 +++++++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index a34cf784e131..9a4b12ef6b53 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -358,7 +358,21 @@ static bool can_demote(int nid, struct scan_control *sc,

 	/* Filter out nodes that are not in cgroup's mems_allowed. */
 	mem_cgroup_node_filter_allowed(memcg, &allowed_mask);
-	return !nodes_empty(allowed_mask);
+	if (nodes_empty(allowed_mask))
+		return false;
+
+	for_each_node_mask(nid, allowed_mask) {
+		int z;
+		struct zone *zone;
+		struct pglist_data *pgdat = NODE_DATA(nid);
+
+		for_each_managed_zone_pgdat(zone, pgdat, z, MAX_NR_ZONES - 1) {
+			if (zone_watermark_ok(zone, 0, min_wmark_pages(zone),
+						ZONE_MOVABLE, 0))
+				return true;
+		}
+	}
+	return false;
 }

 static inline bool can_reclaim_anon_pages(struct mem_cgroup *memcg,
-- 
2.43.0