Re: [PATCH 2/2] sched/fair: Always propagate runnable_load_avg

[Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>]

On 28 April 2017 at 22:33, Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> wrote:
> Hello, Vincent.
>
> On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 10:29:10AM +0200, Vincent Guittot wrote:
>> On 27 April 2017 at 00:52, Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 08:12:09PM +0200, Vincent Guittot wrote:
>> >> On 24 April 2017 at 22:14, Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> wrote:
>> >> Can the problem be on the load balance side instead ?  and more
>> >> precisely in the wakeup path ?
>> >> After looking at the trace, it seems that task placement happens at
>> >> wake up path and if it fails to select the right idle cpu at wake up,
>> >> you will have to wait for a load balance which is alreayd too late
>> >
>> > Oh, I was tracing most of scheduler activities and the ratios of
>> > wakeups picking idle CPUs were about the same regardless of cgroup
>> > membership.  I can confidently say that the latency issue that I'm
>> > seeing is from load balancer picking the wrong busiest CPU, which is
>> > not to say that there can be other problems.
>>
>> ok. Is there any trace that you can share ? your behavior seems
>> different of mine
>
> I'm attaching the debug patch.  With your change (avg instead of
> runnable_avg), the following trace shows why it's wrong.
>
> It's dumping a case where group A has a CPU w/ more than two schbench
> threads and B doesn't, but the load balancer is determining that B is
> loaded heavier.
>
>  dbg_odd: odd: dst=28 idle=2 brk=32 lbtgt=0-31 type=2
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: grp=1,17 w=2 avg=7.247 grp=8.337 sum=8.337 pertask=2.779
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: gcap=1.150 gutil=1.095 run=3 idle=0 gwt=2 type=2 nocap=1
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: CPU001: run=1 schb=1
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: Q001-asdf: w=1.000,l=0.525,u=0.513,r=0.527 run=1 hrun=1 tgs=100.000 tgw=17.266
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: Q001-asdf:  schbench(153757C):w=1.000,l=0.527,u=0.514
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: Q001-/: w=5.744,l=2.522,u=0.520,r=3.067 run=1 hrun=1 tgs=1.000 tgw=0.000
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: Q001-/:  asdf(C):w=5.744,l=3.017,u=0.521
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: CPU017: run=2 schb=2
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: Q017-asdf: w=2.000,l=0.989,u=0.966,r=0.988 run=2 hrun=2 tgs=100.000 tgw=17.266
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: Q017-asdf:  schbench(153737C):w=1.000,l=0.493,u=0.482 schbench(153739):w=1.000,l=0.494,u=0.483
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: Q017-/: w=10.653,l=7.888,u=0.973,r=5.270 run=1 hrun=2 tgs=1.000 tgw=0.000
>  dbg_odd_dump: A: Q017-/:  asdf(C):w=10.653,l=5.269,u=0.966
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: grp=14,30 w=2 avg=7.666 grp=8.819 sum=8.819 pertask=4.409
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: gcap=1.150 gutil=1.116 run=2 idle=0 gwt=2 type=2 nocap=1
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: CPU014: run=1 schb=1
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: Q014-asdf: w=1.000,l=1.004,u=0.970,r=0.492 run=1 hrun=1 tgs=100.000 tgw=17.266
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: Q014-asdf:  schbench(153760C):w=1.000,l=0.491,u=0.476
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: Q014-/: w=5.605,l=11.146,u=0.970,r=5.774 run=1 hrun=1 tgs=1.000 tgw=0.000
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: Q014-/:  asdf(C):w=5.605,l=5.766,u=0.970
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: CPU030: run=1 schb=1
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: Q030-asdf: w=1.000,l=0.538,u=0.518,r=0.558 run=1 hrun=1 tgs=100.000 tgw=17.266
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: Q030-asdf:  schbench(153747C):w=1.000,l=0.537,u=0.516
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: Q030-/: w=5.758,l=3.186,u=0.541,r=3.044 run=1 hrun=1 tgs=1.000 tgw=0.000
>  dbg_odd_dump: B: Q030-/:  asdf(C):w=5.758,l=3.092,u=0.516
>
> You can notice that B's pertask weight is 4.409 which is way higher
> than A's 2.779, and this is from Q014-asdf's contribution to Q014-/ is
> twice as high as it should be.  The root queue's runnable avg should

Are you sure that this is because of blocked load in group A ? it can
be that Q014-asdf has already have to wait before running and its load
still increase while runnable but not running .
IIUC your trace, group A has 2 running tasks and group B only one but
load_balance selects B because of its sgs->avg_load being higher. But
this can also happen even if runnable_load_avg of child cfs_rq was
propagated correctly in group entity because we can have situation
where a group A has only 1 task with higher load than 2 tasks on
groupB and even if blocked load is not taken into account, and
load_balance will select A.

IMHO, we should better improve load balance selection. I'm going to
add smarter group selection in load_balance. that's something we
should have already done but it was difficult without load/util_avg
propagation. it should be doable now

> only contain what's currently active but because we're scaling load
> avg which includes both active and blocked, we're ending up picking
> group B over A.
>
> This shows up in the total number of times we pick the wrong queue and
> thus latency.  I'm running the following script with the debug patch
> applied.
>
>   #!/bin/bash
>
>   date
>   cat /proc/self/cgroup
>
>   echo 1000 > /sys/module/fair/parameters/dbg_odd_nth
>   echo 0 > /sys/module/fair/parameters/dbg_odd_cnt
>
>   ~/schbench -m 2 -t 16 -s 10000 -c 15000 -r 30
>
>   cat /sys/module/fair/parameters/dbg_odd_cnt
>
>
> With your patch applied, in the root cgroup,
>
>   Fri Apr 28 12:48:59 PDT 2017
>   0::/
>   Latency percentiles (usec)
>           50.0000th: 26
>           75.0000th: 63
>           90.0000th: 78
>           95.0000th: 88
>           *99.0000th: 707
>           99.5000th: 5096
>           99.9000th: 10352
>           min=0, max=13743
>   577
>
>
> In the /asdf cgroup,
>
>   Fri Apr 28 13:19:53 PDT 2017
>   0::/asdf
>   Latency percentiles (usec)
>           50.0000th: 35
>           75.0000th: 67
>           90.0000th: 81
>           95.0000th: 98
>           *99.0000th: 2212
>           99.5000th: 4536
>           99.9000th: 11024
>           min=0, max=13026
>   1708
>
>
> The last line is the number of times the load balancer picked a group
> w/o more than two schbench threads on a CPU over one w/.  Some number
> of these are expected as there are other threads and there are some
> plays in all the calculations but propgating avg or not propgating at
> all significantly increases the count and latency.
>
>> > The issue isn't about whether runnable_load_avg or load_avg should be
>> > used but the unexpected differences in the metrics that the load
>>
>> I think that's the root of the problem. I explain a bit more my view
>> on the other thread
>
> So, when picking the busiest group, the only thing which matters is
> the queue's runnable_load_avg, which should approximate the sum of all
> on-queue loads on that CPU.
>
> If we don't propagate or propagate load_avg, we're factoring in
> blocked avg of descendent cgroups into the root's runnable_load_avg
> which is obviously wrong.
>
> We can argue whether overriding a cfs_rq se's load_avg to the scaled
> runnable_load_avg of the cfs_rq is the right way to go or we should
> introduce a separate channel to propagate runnable_load_avg; however,
> it's clear that we need to fix runnable_load_avg propagation one way
> or another.

The minimum would be to not break load_avg

>
> The thing with cfs_rq se's load_avg is that, it isn't really used
> anywhere else AFAICS, so overriding it to the cfs_rq's
> runnable_load_avg isn't prettiest but doesn't really change anything.

load_avg is used for defining the share of each cfs_rq.

>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> tejun