On Tue, 26 Aug 2014 13:43:47 +0800 Junxiao Bi <junxiao.bi@oracle.com> wrote:

> On 08/25/2014 02:48 PM, NeilBrown wrote:
> > On Fri, 22 Aug 2014 18:49:31 -0400 Trond Myklebust
> > <trond.myklebust@primarydata.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> Junxiao Bi reports seeing the following deadlock:
> >>
> >> @ crash> bt 1539
> >> @ PID: 1539   TASK: ffff88178f64a040  CPU: 1   COMMAND: "rpciod/1"
> >> @  #0 [ffff88178f64d2c0] schedule at ffffffff8145833a
> >> @  #1 [ffff88178f64d348] io_schedule at ffffffff8145842c
> >> @  #2 [ffff88178f64d368] sync_page at ffffffff810d8161
> >> @  #3 [ffff88178f64d378] __wait_on_bit at ffffffff8145895b
> >> @  #4 [ffff88178f64d3b8] wait_on_page_bit at ffffffff810d82fe
> >> @  #5 [ffff88178f64d418] wait_on_page_writeback at ffffffff810e2a1a
> >> @  #6 [ffff88178f64d438] shrink_page_list at ffffffff810e34e1
> >> @  #7 [ffff88178f64d588] shrink_list at ffffffff810e3dbe
> >> @  #8 [ffff88178f64d6f8] shrink_zone at ffffffff810e425e
> >> @  #9 [ffff88178f64d7b8] do_try_to_free_pages at ffffffff810e4978
> >> @ #10 [ffff88178f64d828] try_to_free_pages at ffffffff810e4c31
> >> @ #11 [ffff88178f64d8c8] __alloc_pages_nodemask at ffffffff810de370
> > 
> > This stack trace (from 2.6.32) cannot happen in mainline, though it took me a
> > while to remember/discover exactly why.
> > 
> > try_to_free_pages() creates a 'struct scan_control' with ->target_mem_cgroup
> > set to NULL.
> > shrink_page_list() checks ->target_mem_cgroup using global_reclaim() and if
> > it is NULL, wait_on_page_writeback is *not* called.
> > 
> > So we can only hit this deadlock if mem-cgroup limits are imposed on a
> > process which is using NFS - which is quite possible but probably not common.
> > 
> > The fact that a dead-lock can happen only when memcg limits are imposed seems
> > very fragile.  People aren't going to test that case much so there could well
> > be other deadlock possibilities lurking.
> > 
> > Mel: might there be some other way we could get out of this deadlock?
> > Could the wait_on_page_writeback() in shrink_page_list() be made a timed-out
> > wait or something?  Any other wait out of this deadlock other than setting
> > PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO everywhere?
> 
> Not only the wait_on_page_writeback() cause the deadlock but also the
> next pageout()-> (mapping->a_ops->writepage), Trond's second patch fix
> this. So fix the wait_on_page_writeback is not enough to fix deadlock.

Shortly before the only place that pageout() is called there is this code:

			if (page_is_file_cache(page) &&
					(!current_is_kswapd() ||
					 !zone_is_reclaim_dirty(zone))) {
                                .....
				goto keep_locked;


So pageout() only gets called by kswapd() .... or for swap. swap-over-NFS is
already very cautious about memory allocations, and uses nfs_direct_IO, not
nfs_writepage.

So nfs_writepage will never get called during direct reclaim.  There is no
memory-allocate deadlock risk there.

NeilBrown