From: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
To: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>, Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>,
Andreas Dilger <adilger.kernel@dilger.ca>,
"Darrick J. Wong" <djwong@kernel.org>, Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>,
Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org,
linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org,
linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/6] EXT4: Remove ENOMEM/congestion_wait() loops.
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2021 10:37:52 +1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210916003752.GN2361455@dread.disaster.area> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <163174534006.3992.15394603624652359629@noble.neil.brown.name>
On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 08:35:40AM +1000, NeilBrown wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Sep 2021, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > On Wed 15-09-21 07:48:11, Neil Brown wrote:
> > >
> > > Why does __GFP_NOFAIL access the reserves? Why not require that the
> > > relevant "Try harder" flag (__GFP_ATOMIC or __GFP_MEMALLOC) be included
> > > with __GFP_NOFAIL if that is justified?
> >
> > Does 5020e285856c ("mm, oom: give __GFP_NOFAIL allocations access to
> > memory reserves") help?
>
> Yes, that helps. A bit.
>
> I'm not fond of the clause "the allocation request might have come with some
> locks held". What if it doesn't? Does it still have to pay the price.
>
> Should we not require that the caller indicate if any locks are held?
> That way callers which don't hold locks can use __GFP_NOFAIL without
> worrying about imposing on other code.
>
> Or is it so rare that __GFP_NOFAIL would be used without holding a lock
> that it doesn't matter?
>
> The other commit of interest is
>
> Commit: 6c18ba7a1899 ("mm: help __GFP_NOFAIL allocations which do not trigger OOM killer")
>
> I don't find the reasoning convincing. It is a bit like "Robbing Peter
> to pay Paul". It takes from the reserves to allow a __GFP_NOFAIL to
> proceed, with out any reason to think this particular allocation has any
> more 'right' to the reserves than anything else.
>
> While I don't like the reasoning in either of these, they do make it
> clear (to me) that the use of reserves is entirely an internal policy
> decision. They should *not* be seen as part of the API and callers
> should not have to be concerned about it when deciding whether to use
> __GFP_NOFAIL or not.
Agree totally with this - we just want to block until allocation
succeeds, and if the -filesystem- deadlocks because allocation never
succeeds then that's a problem that needs to be solved in the
filesystem with a different memory allocation strategy...
OTOH, setting up a single __GFP_NOFAIL call site with the ability to
take the entire system down seems somewhat misguided.
> The use of these reserves is, at most, a hypothetical problem. If it
> ever looks like becoming a real practical problem, it needs to be fixed
> internally to the page allocator. Maybe an extra water-mark which isn't
> quite as permissive as ALLOC_HIGH...
>
> I'm inclined to drop all references to reserves from the documentation
> for __GFP_NOFAIL. I think there are enough users already that adding a
> couple more isn't going to make problems substantially more likely. And
> more will be added anyway that the mm/ team won't have the opportunity
> or bandwidth to review.
Yup, we've been replacing open coded loops like in kmem_alloc() with
explicit __GFP_NOFAIL usage for a while now:
$ ▶ git grep __GFP_NOFAIL fs/xfs |wc -l
33
$
ANd we've got another 100 or so call sites planned for conversion to
__GFP_NOFAIL. Hence the suggestion to remove the use of
reserves from __GFP_NOFAIL seems like a sensible plan because it has
never been necessary in the past for all the allocation sites we are
converting from open coded loops to __GFP_NOFAIL...
Cheers,
Dave.
--
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-09-16 0:38 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 34+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-09-14 0:13 [PATCH 0/6] congestion_wait() and GFP_NOFAIL NeilBrown
2021-09-14 0:13 ` [PATCH 2/6] MM: annotate congestion_wait() and wait_iff_congested() as ineffective NeilBrown
2021-09-15 11:56 ` Michal Hocko
2021-09-16 22:13 ` NeilBrown
2021-09-14 0:13 ` [PATCH 5/6] XFS: remove congestion_wait() loop from kmem_alloc() NeilBrown
2021-09-14 1:31 ` Dave Chinner
2021-09-14 3:27 ` NeilBrown
2021-09-14 6:05 ` Dave Chinner
2021-09-14 0:13 ` [PATCH 3/6] EXT4: Remove ENOMEM/congestion_wait() loops NeilBrown
2021-09-14 16:34 ` Mel Gorman
2021-09-14 21:48 ` NeilBrown
2021-09-15 12:06 ` Michal Hocko
2021-09-15 22:35 ` NeilBrown
2021-09-16 0:37 ` Dave Chinner [this message]
2021-09-16 6:52 ` Michal Hocko
2021-09-14 23:55 ` Dave Chinner
2021-09-15 8:59 ` Mel Gorman
2021-09-15 12:20 ` Michal Hocko
2021-09-15 14:35 ` Mel Gorman
2021-09-15 22:38 ` Dave Chinner
2021-09-16 9:00 ` Mel Gorman
2021-09-15 0:28 ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-09-15 5:25 ` NeilBrown
2021-09-15 17:02 ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-09-14 0:13 ` [PATCH 1/6] MM: improve documentation for __GFP_NOFAIL NeilBrown
2021-09-15 11:51 ` Michal Hocko
2021-09-14 0:13 ` [PATCH 6/6] XFS: remove congestion_wait() loop from xfs_buf_alloc_pages() NeilBrown
2021-09-14 2:08 ` Dave Chinner
2021-09-14 2:35 ` NeilBrown
2021-09-14 5:33 ` Dave Chinner
2021-09-14 16:45 ` Mel Gorman
2021-09-14 21:13 ` NeilBrown
2021-09-14 0:13 ` [PATCH 4/6] EXT4: remove congestion_wait from ext4_bio_write_page, and simplify NeilBrown
2021-09-17 2:56 [PATCH 0/6 v2] congestion_wait() and GFP_NOFAIL NeilBrown
2021-09-17 2:56 ` [PATCH 3/6] EXT4: Remove ENOMEM/congestion_wait() loops NeilBrown
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