Re: [PATCH 15/27] mm, page_alloc: Consider dirtyable memory in terms of nodes

[Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>]

On Tue 21-06-16 15:15:54, Mel Gorman wrote:
> Historically dirty pages were spread among zones but now that LRUs are
> per-node it is more appropriate to consider dirty pages in a node.

I think this should deserve a note that a behavior for 32b highmem
systems will change and could lead to early write throttling and
observable stalls as a result because highmem_dirtyable_memory will
always return totalhigh_pages regardless of how much is free resp. on
LRUs so we can overestimate it.

Highmem is usually used for LRU pages but there are other allocations
which can use it (e.g. vmalloc). I understand how this is both an
inherent problem of 32b with a larger high:low ratio and why it is hard
to at least pretend we can cope with it with node based approach but we
should at least document it.

I workaround would be to enable highmem_dirtyable_memory which can lead
to premature OOM killer for some workloads AFAIR.

> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
> Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>

The patch looks ok otherwise to me.
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>

> ---
>  include/linux/mmzone.h    | 12 +++---
>  include/linux/writeback.h |  2 +-
>  mm/page-writeback.c       | 94 ++++++++++++++++++++++++-----------------------
>  mm/page_alloc.c           | 26 ++++++-------
>  4 files changed, 67 insertions(+), 67 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> index 60a1becfd256..ca9e05ca851d 100644
> --- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
> +++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
> @@ -361,12 +361,6 @@ struct zone {
>  	struct pglist_data	*zone_pgdat;
>  	struct per_cpu_pageset __percpu *pageset;
>  
> -	/*
> -	 * This is a per-zone reserve of pages that are not available
> -	 * to userspace allocations.
> -	 */
> -	unsigned long		totalreserve_pages;
> -
>  #ifndef CONFIG_SPARSEMEM
>  	/*
>  	 * Flags for a pageblock_nr_pages block. See pageblock-flags.h.
> @@ -684,6 +678,12 @@ typedef struct pglist_data {
>  	/* Number of pages migrated during the rate limiting time interval */
>  	unsigned long numabalancing_migrate_nr_pages;
>  #endif
> +	/*
> +	 * This is a per-node reserve of pages that are not available
> +	 * to userspace allocations.
> +	 */
> +	unsigned long		totalreserve_pages;
> +
>  	/* Write-intensive fields used from the page allocator */
>  	ZONE_PADDING(_pad1_)
>  	spinlock_t		lru_lock;
> diff --git a/include/linux/writeback.h b/include/linux/writeback.h
> index d0b5ca5d4e08..44b4422ae57f 100644
> --- a/include/linux/writeback.h
> +++ b/include/linux/writeback.h
> @@ -320,7 +320,7 @@ void laptop_mode_timer_fn(unsigned long data);
>  static inline void laptop_sync_completion(void) { }
>  #endif
>  void throttle_vm_writeout(gfp_t gfp_mask);
> -bool zone_dirty_ok(struct zone *zone);
> +bool node_dirty_ok(struct pglist_data *pgdat);
>  int wb_domain_init(struct wb_domain *dom, gfp_t gfp);
>  #ifdef CONFIG_CGROUP_WRITEBACK
>  void wb_domain_exit(struct wb_domain *dom);
> diff --git a/mm/page-writeback.c b/mm/page-writeback.c
> index a0aa268b6281..a2b24d5ea43a 100644
> --- a/mm/page-writeback.c
> +++ b/mm/page-writeback.c
> @@ -267,26 +267,35 @@ static void wb_min_max_ratio(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
>   */
>  
>  /**
> - * zone_dirtyable_memory - number of dirtyable pages in a zone
> - * @zone: the zone
> + * node_dirtyable_memory - number of dirtyable pages in a node
> + * @pgdat: the node
>   *
> - * Returns the zone's number of pages potentially available for dirty
> - * page cache.  This is the base value for the per-zone dirty limits.
> + * Returns the node's number of pages potentially available for dirty
> + * page cache.  This is the base value for the per-node dirty limits.
>   */
> -static unsigned long zone_dirtyable_memory(struct zone *zone)
> +static unsigned long node_dirtyable_memory(struct pglist_data *pgdat)
>  {
> -	unsigned long nr_pages;
> +	unsigned long nr_pages = 0;
> +	int z;
> +
> +	for (z = 0; z < MAX_NR_ZONES; z++) {
> +		struct zone *zone = pgdat->node_zones + z;
> +
> +		if (!populated_zone(zone))
> +			continue;
> +
> +		nr_pages += zone_page_state(zone, NR_FREE_PAGES);
> +	}
>  
> -	nr_pages = zone_page_state(zone, NR_FREE_PAGES);
>  	/*
>  	 * Pages reserved for the kernel should not be considered
>  	 * dirtyable, to prevent a situation where reclaim has to
>  	 * clean pages in order to balance the zones.
>  	 */
> -	nr_pages -= min(nr_pages, zone->totalreserve_pages);
> +	nr_pages -= min(nr_pages, pgdat->totalreserve_pages);
>  
> -	nr_pages += node_page_state(zone->zone_pgdat, NR_INACTIVE_FILE);
> -	nr_pages += node_page_state(zone->zone_pgdat, NR_ACTIVE_FILE);
> +	nr_pages += node_page_state(pgdat, NR_INACTIVE_FILE);
> +	nr_pages += node_page_state(pgdat, NR_ACTIVE_FILE);
>  
>  	return nr_pages;
>  }
> @@ -294,29 +303,13 @@ static unsigned long zone_dirtyable_memory(struct zone *zone)
>  static unsigned long highmem_dirtyable_memory(unsigned long total)
>  {
>  #ifdef CONFIG_HIGHMEM
> -	int node;
>  	unsigned long x = 0;
> -	int i;
> -
> -	for_each_node_state(node, N_HIGH_MEMORY) {
> -		for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_ZONES; i++) {
> -			struct zone *z = &NODE_DATA(node)->node_zones[i];
>  
> -			if (is_highmem(z))
> -				x += zone_dirtyable_memory(z);
> -		}
> -	}
>  	/*
> -	 * Unreclaimable memory (kernel memory or anonymous memory
> -	 * without swap) can bring down the dirtyable pages below
> -	 * the zone's dirty balance reserve and the above calculation
> -	 * will underflow.  However we still want to add in nodes
> -	 * which are below threshold (negative values) to get a more
> -	 * accurate calculation but make sure that the total never
> -	 * underflows.
> +	 * LRU lists are per-node so there is no fast and accurate means of
> +	 * calculating dirtyable memory in the highmem zone.
>  	 */
> -	if ((long)x < 0)
> -		x = 0;
> +	x = totalhigh_pages;
>  
>  	/*
>  	 * Make sure that the number of highmem pages is never larger
> @@ -445,23 +438,23 @@ void global_dirty_limits(unsigned long *pbackground, unsigned long *pdirty)
>  }
>  
>  /**
> - * zone_dirty_limit - maximum number of dirty pages allowed in a zone
> - * @zone: the zone
> + * node_dirty_limit - maximum number of dirty pages allowed in a node
> + * @pgdat: the node
>   *
> - * Returns the maximum number of dirty pages allowed in a zone, based
> - * on the zone's dirtyable memory.
> + * Returns the maximum number of dirty pages allowed in a node, based
> + * on the node's dirtyable memory.
>   */
> -static unsigned long zone_dirty_limit(struct zone *zone)
> +static unsigned long node_dirty_limit(struct pglist_data *pgdat)
>  {
> -	unsigned long zone_memory = zone_dirtyable_memory(zone);
> +	unsigned long node_memory = node_dirtyable_memory(pgdat);
>  	struct task_struct *tsk = current;
>  	unsigned long dirty;
>  
>  	if (vm_dirty_bytes)
>  		dirty = DIV_ROUND_UP(vm_dirty_bytes, PAGE_SIZE) *
> -			zone_memory / global_dirtyable_memory();
> +			node_memory / global_dirtyable_memory();
>  	else
> -		dirty = vm_dirty_ratio * zone_memory / 100;
> +		dirty = vm_dirty_ratio * node_memory / 100;
>  
>  	if (tsk->flags & PF_LESS_THROTTLE || rt_task(tsk))
>  		dirty += dirty / 4;
> @@ -470,19 +463,30 @@ static unsigned long zone_dirty_limit(struct zone *zone)
>  }
>  
>  /**
> - * zone_dirty_ok - tells whether a zone is within its dirty limits
> - * @zone: the zone to check
> + * node_dirty_ok - tells whether a node is within its dirty limits
> + * @pgdat: the node to check
>   *
> - * Returns %true when the dirty pages in @zone are within the zone's
> + * Returns %true when the dirty pages in @pgdat are within the node's
>   * dirty limit, %false if the limit is exceeded.
>   */
> -bool zone_dirty_ok(struct zone *zone)
> +bool node_dirty_ok(struct pglist_data *pgdat)
>  {
> -	unsigned long limit = zone_dirty_limit(zone);
> +	int z;
> +	unsigned long limit = node_dirty_limit(pgdat);
> +	unsigned long nr_pages = 0;
> +
> +	for (z = 0; z < MAX_NR_ZONES; z++) {
> +		struct zone *zone = pgdat->node_zones + z;
> +
> +		if (!populated_zone(zone))
> +			continue;
> +
> +		nr_pages += zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_DIRTY);
> +		nr_pages += zone_page_state(zone, NR_UNSTABLE_NFS);
> +		nr_pages += zone_page_state(zone, NR_WRITEBACK);
> +	}
>  
> -	return zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
> -	       zone_page_state(zone, NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) +
> -	       zone_page_state(zone, NR_WRITEBACK) <= limit;
> +	return nr_pages <= limit;
>  }
>  
>  int dirty_background_ratio_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index d62b147fd426..962e98e54fd2 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -2917,31 +2917,24 @@ get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
>  		}
>  		/*
>  		 * When allocating a page cache page for writing, we
> -		 * want to get it from a zone that is within its dirty
> -		 * limit, such that no single zone holds more than its
> +		 * want to get it from a node that is within its dirty
> +		 * limit, such that no single node holds more than its
>  		 * proportional share of globally allowed dirty pages.
> -		 * The dirty limits take into account the zone's
> +		 * The dirty limits take into account the node's
>  		 * lowmem reserves and high watermark so that kswapd
>  		 * should be able to balance it without having to
>  		 * write pages from its LRU list.
>  		 *
> -		 * This may look like it could increase pressure on
> -		 * lower zones by failing allocations in higher zones
> -		 * before they are full.  But the pages that do spill
> -		 * over are limited as the lower zones are protected
> -		 * by this very same mechanism.  It should not become
> -		 * a practical burden to them.
> -		 *
>  		 * XXX: For now, allow allocations to potentially
> -		 * exceed the per-zone dirty limit in the slowpath
> +		 * exceed the per-node dirty limit in the slowpath
>  		 * (spread_dirty_pages unset) before going into reclaim,
>  		 * which is important when on a NUMA setup the allowed
> -		 * zones are together not big enough to reach the
> +		 * nodes are together not big enough to reach the
>  		 * global limit.  The proper fix for these situations
> -		 * will require awareness of zones in the
> +		 * will require awareness of nodes in the
>  		 * dirty-throttling and the flusher threads.
>  		 */
> -		if (ac->spread_dirty_pages && !zone_dirty_ok(zone))
> +		if (ac->spread_dirty_pages && !node_dirty_ok(zone->zone_pgdat))
>  			continue;
>  
>  		mark = zone->watermark[alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_MASK];
> @@ -6692,6 +6685,9 @@ static void calculate_totalreserve_pages(void)
>  	enum zone_type i, j;
>  
>  	for_each_online_pgdat(pgdat) {
> +
> +		pgdat->totalreserve_pages = 0;
> +
>  		for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_ZONES; i++) {
>  			struct zone *zone = pgdat->node_zones + i;
>  			long max = 0;
> @@ -6708,7 +6704,7 @@ static void calculate_totalreserve_pages(void)
>  			if (max > zone->managed_pages)
>  				max = zone->managed_pages;
>  
> -			zone->totalreserve_pages = max;
> +			pgdat->totalreserve_pages += max;
>  
>  			reserve_pages += max;
>  		}
> -- 
> 2.6.4
> 
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-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs