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* [PATCH 0/5] Fragmentation avoidance improvements v5
@ 2018-11-23 11:45 Mel Gorman
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 1/5] mm, page_alloc: Spread allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation Mel Gorman
                   ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mel Gorman @ 2018-11-23 11:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Morton
  Cc: Vlastimil Babka, David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan,
	Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM, Mel Gorman

There are some big changes due to both Vlastimil's review feedback on v4 and
some oddities spotted while answering his review.  In some respects, the
series is slightly less effective but the approach is more consistent and
logical overall. The overhead is also lower from the first patch and stalls
are less harmful in the last patch so overall I think it has much improved.

Changelog since v4
o Clarified changelogs in response to review
o Add a compile-time check on where Normal and DMA32 is		(vbabka)
o Restart zone iteration properly in get_page_from_freelist	(vbabka)
o Reduce overhead in the page allocation fast path		(mel)
o Do not over-boost due to a fragmentation event		(vbabka)
o Correct documentation of sysctl				(mel)
o Really do not wake kswapd if the calling context forbids it	(vbabka,mel)
o Do not shrink slab if boosting watermarks as premature
  reclaim of slab can lead to regressions in IO benchmarks	(mel)
o Take zone lock when boosting watermarks if necessary		(vbabka)

Changelog since v3
o Rebase to 4.20-rc3
o Remove a stupid warning from the last patch

Changelog since v2
o Drop patch 5 as it was borderline
o Decrease timeout when stalling on fragmentation events

Changelog since v1
o Rebase to v4.20-rc1 for the THP __GFP_THISNODE patch in particular
o Add tracepoint to record fragmentation stall durations
o Add vmstat event to record that a fragmentation stall occurred
o Stalls now alter watermark boosting
o Stalls occur only when the allocation is about to fail

It has been noted before that fragmentation avoidance (aka
anti-fragmentation) is not perfect. Given sufficient time or an adverse
workload, memory gets fragmented and the long-term success of high-order
allocations degrades. This series defines an adverse workload, a definition
of external fragmentation events (including serious) ones and a series
that reduces the level of those fragmentation events.

The details of the workload and the consequences are described in more
detail in the changelogs. However, from patch 1, this is a high-level
summary of the adverse workload. The exact details are found in the
mmtests implementation.

The broad details of the workload are as follows;

1. Create an XFS filesystem (not specified in the configuration but done
   as part of the testing for this patch)
2. Start 4 fio threads that write a number of 64K files inefficiently.
   Inefficiently means that files are created on first access and not
   created in advance (fio parameterr create_on_open=1) and fallocate
   is not used (fallocate=none). With multiple IO issuers this creates
   a mix of slab and page cache allocations over time. The total size
   of the files is 150% physical memory so that the slabs and page cache
   pages get mixed
3. Warm up a number of fio read-only threads accessing the same files
   created in step 2. This part runs for the same length of time it
   took to create the files. It'll fault back in old data and further
   interleave slab and page cache allocations. As it's now low on
   memory due to step 2, fragmentation occurs as pageblocks get
   stolen.
4. While step 3 is still running, start a process that tries to allocate
   75% of memory as huge pages with a number of threads. The number of
   threads is based on a (NR_CPUS_SOCKET - NR_FIO_THREADS)/4 to avoid THP
   threads contending with fio, any other threads or forcing cross-NUMA
   scheduling. Note that the test has not been used on a machine with less
   than 8 cores. The benchmark records whether huge pages were allocated
   and what the fault latency was in microseconds
5. Measure the number of events potentially causing external fragmentation,
   the fault latency and the huge page allocation success rate.
6. Cleanup

Overall the series reduces external fragmentation causing events by over 94%
on 1 and 2 socket machines, which in turn impacts high-order allocation
success rates over the long term. There are differences in latencies and
high-order allocation success rates. Latencies are a mixed bag as they
are vulnerable to exact system state and whether allocations succeeded
so they are treated as a secondary metric.

Patch 1 uses lower zones if they are populated and have free memory
	instead of fragmenting a higher zone. It's special cased to
	handle a Normal->DMA32 fallback with the reasons explained
	in the changelog.

Patch 2-4 boosts watermarks temporarily when an external fragmentation
	event occurs. kswapd wakes to reclaim a small amount of old memory
	and then wakes kcompactd on completion to recover the system
	slightly. This introduces some overhead in the slowpath. The level
	of boosting can be tuned or disabled depending on the tolerance
	for fragmentation vs allocation latency.

Patch 5 stalls some movable allocation requests to let kswapd from patch 4
	make some progress. The duration of the stalls is very low but it
	is possible to tune the system to avoid fragmentation events if
	larger stalls can be tolerated.

The bulk of the improvement in fragmentation avoidance is from patches
1-4 but patch 5 can deal with a rare corner case and provides the option
of tuning a system for THP allocation success rates in exchange for
some stalls to control fragmentation.

 Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt   |  44 +++++++
 include/linux/mm.h            |   2 +
 include/linux/mmzone.h        |  14 ++-
 include/linux/vm_event_item.h |   1 +
 include/trace/events/kmem.h   |  21 ++++
 kernel/sysctl.c               |  18 +++
 mm/compaction.c               |   2 +-
 mm/internal.h                 |  15 ++-
 mm/page_alloc.c               | 263 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
 mm/vmscan.c                   | 136 ++++++++++++++++++++--
 mm/vmstat.c                   |   1 +
 11 files changed, 473 insertions(+), 44 deletions(-)

-- 
2.16.4


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* [PATCH 1/5] mm, page_alloc: Spread allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation
  2018-11-23 11:45 [PATCH 0/5] Fragmentation avoidance improvements v5 Mel Gorman
@ 2018-11-23 11:45 ` Mel Gorman
  2018-11-26 12:36   ` Vlastimil Babka
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 2/5] mm: Move zone watermark accesses behind an accessor Mel Gorman
                   ` (3 subsequent siblings)
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mel Gorman @ 2018-11-23 11:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Morton
  Cc: Vlastimil Babka, David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan,
	Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM, Mel Gorman

The page allocator zone lists are iterated based on the watermarks
of each zone which does not take anti-fragmentation into account. On
x86, node 0 may have multiple zones while other nodes have one zone. A
consequence is that tasks running on node 0 may fragment ZONE_NORMAL even
though ZONE_DMA32 has plenty of free memory. This patch special cases
the allocator fast path such that it'll try an allocation from a lower
local zone before fragmenting a higher zone. In this case, stealing of
pageblocks or orders larger than a pageblock are still allowed in the
fast path as they are uninteresting from a fragmentation point of view.

This was evaluated using a benchmark designed to fragment memory before
attempting THP allocations. It's implemented in mmtests as the following
configurations

configs/config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale
configs/config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-defrag
configs/config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage

e.g. from mmtests
./run-mmtests.sh --run-monitor --config configs/config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale test-run-1

The broad details of the workload are as follows;

1. Create an XFS filesystem (not specified in the configuration but done
   as part of the testing for this patch).
2. Start 4 fio threads that write a number of 64K files inefficiently.
   Inefficiently means that files are created on first access and not
   created in advance (fio parameter create_on_open=1) and fallocate
   is not used (fallocate=none). With multiple IO issuers this creates
   a mix of slab and page cache allocations over time. The total size
   of the files is 150% physical memory so that the slabs and page cache
   pages get mixed.
3. Warm up a number of fio read-only processes accessing the same files
   created in step 2. This part runs for the same length of time it
   took to create the files. It'll refault old data and further
   interleave slab and page cache allocations. As it's now low on
   memory due to step 2, fragmentation occurs as pageblocks get
   stolen.
4. While step 3 is still running, start a process that tries to allocate
   75% of memory as huge pages with a number of threads. The number of
   threads is based on a (NR_CPUS_SOCKET - NR_FIO_THREADS)/4 to avoid THP
   threads contending with fio, any other threads or forcing cross-NUMA
   scheduling. Note that the test has not been used on a machine with less
   than 8 cores. The benchmark records whether huge pages were allocated
   and what the fault latency was in microseconds.
5. Measure the number of events potentially causing external fragmentation,
   the fault latency and the huge page allocation success rate.
6. Cleanup the test files.

Note that due to the use of IO and page cache that this benchmark is not
suitable for running on large machines where the time to fragment memory
may be excessive. Also note that while this is one mix that generates
fragmentation that it's not the only mix that generates fragmentation.
Differences in workload that are more slab-intensive or whether SLUB is
used with high-order pages may yield different results.

When the page allocator fragments memory, it records the event using the
mm_page_alloc_extfrag ftrace event. If the fallback_order is smaller than
a pageblock order (order-9 on 64-bit x86) then it's considered to be an
"external fragmentation event" that may cause issues in the future. Hence,
the primary metric here is the number of external fragmentation events that
occur with order < 9. The secondary metric is allocation latency and huge
page allocation success rates but note that differences in latencies and
what the success rate also can affect the number of external fragmentation
event which is why it's a secondary metric.

1-socket Skylake machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 1 THP allocating thread
--------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:   804694
4.20-rc3+patch:                      408912 (49% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                      vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-1      662.92 (   0.00%)      653.58 *   1.41%*
Amean     fault-huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)        0.00 (   0.00%)

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Percentage huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)        0.00 (   0.00%)

Fault latencies are slightly reduced while allocation success rates remain
at zero as this configuration does not make any special effort to allocate
THP and fio is heavily active at the time and either filling memory or
keeping pages resident. However, a 49% reduction of serious fragmentation
events reduces the changes of external fragmentation being a problem in
the future.

Vlastimil asked during review for a breakdown of the allocation types
that are falling back.

vanilla
   3816 MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE
 800845 MIGRATE_MOVABLE
     33 MIGRATE_UNRECLAIMABLE

patch
    735 MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE
 408135 MIGRATE_MOVABLE
     42 MIGRATE_UNRECLAIMABLE

The majority of the fallbacks are due to movable allocations and this is
consistent for the workload throughout the series so will not be presented
again as the primary source of fallbacks are movable allocations.

Movable fallbacks are sometimes considered "ok" to fallback because they can
be migrated. The problem is that they can fill an unmovable/reclaimable
pageblock causing those allocations to fallback later and polluting
pageblocks with pages that cannot move.  If there is a movable fallback,
it is pretty much guaranteed to affect an unmovable/reclaimable pageblock
and while it might not be enough to actually cause a unmovable/reclaimable
fallback in the future, we cannot know that in advance so the patch takes
the only option available to it. Hence, it's important to control them. This
point is also consistent throughout the series and will not be repeated.

1-socket Skylake machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  291392
4.20-rc3+patch:                     191187 (34% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                      vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-1     1495.14 (   0.00%)     1467.55 (   1.85%)
Amean     fault-huge-1     1098.48 (   0.00%)     1127.11 (  -2.61%)

thpfioscale Percentage Faults Huge
                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Percentage huge-1       78.57 (   0.00%)       77.64 (  -1.18%)

Fragmentation events were reduced quite a bit although this is known
to be a little variable. The latencies and allocation success rates
are similar but they were already quite high.

2-socket Haswell machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 5 THP allocating threads
----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  215698
4.20-rc3+patch:                     200210 (7% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                      vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     1350.05 (   0.00%)     1346.45 (   0.27%)
Amean     fault-huge-5     4181.01 (   0.00%)     3418.60 (  18.24%)

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Percentage huge-5        1.15 (   0.00%)        0.78 ( -31.88%)

The reduction of external fragmentation events is slight and this is
partially due to the removal of __GFP_THISNODE in commit ac5b2c18911f ("mm:
thp: relax __GFP_THISNODE for MADV_HUGEPAGE mappings") as THP allocations
can now spill over to remote nodes instead of fragmenting local memory.

2-socket Haswell machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9: 166352
4.20-rc3+patch:                    147463 (11% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                      vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     6138.97 (   0.00%)     6217.43 (  -1.28%)
Amean     fault-huge-5     2294.28 (   0.00%)     3163.33 * -37.88%*

thpfioscale Percentage Faults Huge
                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Percentage huge-5       96.82 (   0.00%)       95.14 (  -1.74%)

There was a slight reduction in external fragmentation events although
the latencies were higher. The allocation success rate is high enough that
the system is struggling and there is quite a lot of parallel reclaim and
compaction activity. There is also a certain degree of luck on whether
processes start on node 0 or not for this patch but the relevance is
reduced later in the series.

Overall, the patch reduces the number of external fragmentation causing
events so the success of THP over long periods of time would be improved
for this adverse workload.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
---
 mm/internal.h   |  13 ++++---
 mm/page_alloc.c | 108 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------
 2 files changed, 105 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/internal.h b/mm/internal.h
index 291eb2b6d1d8..544355156c92 100644
--- a/mm/internal.h
+++ b/mm/internal.h
@@ -480,10 +480,15 @@ unsigned long reclaim_clean_pages_from_list(struct zone *zone,
 #define ALLOC_OOM		ALLOC_NO_WATERMARKS
 #endif
 
-#define ALLOC_HARDER		0x10 /* try to alloc harder */
-#define ALLOC_HIGH		0x20 /* __GFP_HIGH set */
-#define ALLOC_CPUSET		0x40 /* check for correct cpuset */
-#define ALLOC_CMA		0x80 /* allow allocations from CMA areas */
+#define ALLOC_HARDER		 0x10 /* try to alloc harder */
+#define ALLOC_HIGH		 0x20 /* __GFP_HIGH set */
+#define ALLOC_CPUSET		 0x40 /* check for correct cpuset */
+#define ALLOC_CMA		 0x80 /* allow allocations from CMA areas */
+#ifdef CONFIG_ZONE_DMA32
+#define ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT	0x100 /* avoid mixing pageblock types */
+#else
+#define ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT	  0x0
+#endif
 
 enum ttu_flags;
 struct tlbflush_unmap_batch;
diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index 6847177dc4a1..f86638aee96a 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -2375,20 +2375,30 @@ static bool unreserve_highatomic_pageblock(const struct alloc_context *ac,
  * condition simpler.
  */
 static __always_inline bool
-__rmqueue_fallback(struct zone *zone, int order, int start_migratetype)
+__rmqueue_fallback(struct zone *zone, int order, int start_migratetype,
+						unsigned int alloc_flags)
 {
 	struct free_area *area;
 	int current_order;
+	int min_order = order;
 	struct page *page;
 	int fallback_mt;
 	bool can_steal;
 
+	/*
+	 * Do not steal pages from freelists belonging to other pageblocks
+	 * i.e. orders < pageblock_order. If there are no local zones free,
+	 * the zonelists will be reiterated without ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT.
+	 */
+	if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT)
+		min_order = pageblock_order;
+
 	/*
 	 * Find the largest available free page in the other list. This roughly
 	 * approximates finding the pageblock with the most free pages, which
 	 * would be too costly to do exactly.
 	 */
-	for (current_order = MAX_ORDER - 1; current_order >= order;
+	for (current_order = MAX_ORDER - 1; current_order >= min_order;
 				--current_order) {
 		area = &(zone->free_area[current_order]);
 		fallback_mt = find_suitable_fallback(area, current_order,
@@ -2447,7 +2457,8 @@ __rmqueue_fallback(struct zone *zone, int order, int start_migratetype)
  * Call me with the zone->lock already held.
  */
 static __always_inline struct page *
-__rmqueue(struct zone *zone, unsigned int order, int migratetype)
+__rmqueue(struct zone *zone, unsigned int order, int migratetype,
+						unsigned int alloc_flags)
 {
 	struct page *page;
 
@@ -2457,7 +2468,8 @@ __rmqueue(struct zone *zone, unsigned int order, int migratetype)
 		if (migratetype == MIGRATE_MOVABLE)
 			page = __rmqueue_cma_fallback(zone, order);
 
-		if (!page && __rmqueue_fallback(zone, order, migratetype))
+		if (!page && __rmqueue_fallback(zone, order, migratetype,
+								alloc_flags))
 			goto retry;
 	}
 
@@ -2472,13 +2484,14 @@ __rmqueue(struct zone *zone, unsigned int order, int migratetype)
  */
 static int rmqueue_bulk(struct zone *zone, unsigned int order,
 			unsigned long count, struct list_head *list,
-			int migratetype)
+			int migratetype, unsigned int alloc_flags)
 {
 	int i, alloced = 0;
 
 	spin_lock(&zone->lock);
 	for (i = 0; i < count; ++i) {
-		struct page *page = __rmqueue(zone, order, migratetype);
+		struct page *page = __rmqueue(zone, order, migratetype,
+								alloc_flags);
 		if (unlikely(page == NULL))
 			break;
 
@@ -2934,6 +2947,7 @@ static inline void zone_statistics(struct zone *preferred_zone, struct zone *z)
 
 /* Remove page from the per-cpu list, caller must protect the list */
 static struct page *__rmqueue_pcplist(struct zone *zone, int migratetype,
+			unsigned int alloc_flags,
 			struct per_cpu_pages *pcp,
 			struct list_head *list)
 {
@@ -2943,7 +2957,7 @@ static struct page *__rmqueue_pcplist(struct zone *zone, int migratetype,
 		if (list_empty(list)) {
 			pcp->count += rmqueue_bulk(zone, 0,
 					pcp->batch, list,
-					migratetype);
+					migratetype, alloc_flags);
 			if (unlikely(list_empty(list)))
 				return NULL;
 		}
@@ -2959,7 +2973,8 @@ static struct page *__rmqueue_pcplist(struct zone *zone, int migratetype,
 /* Lock and remove page from the per-cpu list */
 static struct page *rmqueue_pcplist(struct zone *preferred_zone,
 			struct zone *zone, unsigned int order,
-			gfp_t gfp_flags, int migratetype)
+			gfp_t gfp_flags, int migratetype,
+			unsigned int alloc_flags)
 {
 	struct per_cpu_pages *pcp;
 	struct list_head *list;
@@ -2969,7 +2984,7 @@ static struct page *rmqueue_pcplist(struct zone *preferred_zone,
 	local_irq_save(flags);
 	pcp = &this_cpu_ptr(zone->pageset)->pcp;
 	list = &pcp->lists[migratetype];
-	page = __rmqueue_pcplist(zone,  migratetype, pcp, list);
+	page = __rmqueue_pcplist(zone,  migratetype, alloc_flags, pcp, list);
 	if (page) {
 		__count_zid_vm_events(PGALLOC, page_zonenum(page), 1 << order);
 		zone_statistics(preferred_zone, zone);
@@ -2992,7 +3007,7 @@ struct page *rmqueue(struct zone *preferred_zone,
 
 	if (likely(order == 0)) {
 		page = rmqueue_pcplist(preferred_zone, zone, order,
-				gfp_flags, migratetype);
+				gfp_flags, migratetype, alloc_flags);
 		goto out;
 	}
 
@@ -3011,7 +3026,7 @@ struct page *rmqueue(struct zone *preferred_zone,
 				trace_mm_page_alloc_zone_locked(page, order, migratetype);
 		}
 		if (!page)
-			page = __rmqueue(zone, order, migratetype);
+			page = __rmqueue(zone, order, migratetype, alloc_flags);
 	} while (page && check_new_pages(page, order));
 	spin_unlock(&zone->lock);
 	if (!page)
@@ -3253,6 +3268,40 @@ static bool zone_allows_reclaim(struct zone *local_zone, struct zone *zone)
 }
 #endif	/* CONFIG_NUMA */
 
+#ifdef CONFIG_ZONE_DMA32
+/*
+ * The restriction on ZONE_DMA32 as being a suitable zone to use to avoid
+ * fragmentation is subtle. If the preferred zone was HIGHMEM then
+ * premature use of a lower zone may cause lowmem pressure problems that
+ * are worse than fragmentation. If the next zone is ZONE_DMA then it is
+ * probably too small. It only makes sense to spread allocations to avoid
+ * fragmentation between the Normal and DMA32 zones.
+ */
+static inline unsigned int
+alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone)
+{
+	if (zone_idx(zone) != ZONE_NORMAL)
+		return 0;
+
+	/*
+	 * If ZONE_DMA32 exists, assume it is the one after ZONE_NORMAL and
+	 * the pointer is within zone->zone_pgdat->node_zones[]. Also assume
+	 * on UMA that if Normal is populated then so is DMA32.
+	 */
+	BUILD_BUG_ON(ZONE_NORMAL - ZONE_DMA32 != 1);
+	if (nr_online_nodes > 1 && !populated_zone(--zone))
+		return 0;
+
+	return ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT;
+}
+#else
+static inline unsigned int
+alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone)
+{
+	return 0;
+}
+#endif
+
 /*
  * get_page_from_freelist goes through the zonelist trying to allocate
  * a page.
@@ -3261,14 +3310,18 @@ static struct page *
 get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
 						const struct alloc_context *ac)
 {
-	struct zoneref *z = ac->preferred_zoneref;
+	struct zoneref *z;
 	struct zone *zone;
 	struct pglist_data *last_pgdat_dirty_limit = NULL;
+	bool no_fallback;
 
+retry:
 	/*
 	 * Scan zonelist, looking for a zone with enough free.
 	 * See also __cpuset_node_allowed() comment in kernel/cpuset.c.
 	 */
+	no_fallback = alloc_flags & ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT;
+	z = ac->preferred_zoneref;
 	for_next_zone_zonelist_nodemask(zone, z, ac->zonelist, ac->high_zoneidx,
 								ac->nodemask) {
 		struct page *page;
@@ -3307,6 +3360,22 @@ get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
 			}
 		}
 
+		if (no_fallback && nr_online_nodes > 1 &&
+		    zone != ac->preferred_zoneref->zone) {
+			int local_nid;
+
+			/*
+			 * If moving to a remote node, retry but allow
+			 * fragmenting fallbacks. Locality is more important
+			 * than fragmentation avoidance.
+			 */
+			local_nid = zone_to_nid(ac->preferred_zoneref->zone);
+			if (zone_to_nid(zone) != local_nid) {
+				alloc_flags &= ~ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT;
+				goto retry;
+			}
+		}
+
 		mark = zone->watermark[alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_MASK];
 		if (!zone_watermark_fast(zone, order, mark,
 				       ac_classzone_idx(ac), alloc_flags)) {
@@ -3374,6 +3443,15 @@ get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
 		}
 	}
 
+	/*
+	 * It's possible on a UMA machine to get through all zones that are
+	 * fragmented. If avoiding fragmentation, reset and try again.
+	 */
+	if (no_fallback) {
+		alloc_flags &= ~ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT;
+		goto retry;
+	}
+
 	return NULL;
 }
 
@@ -4369,6 +4447,12 @@ __alloc_pages_nodemask(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int preferred_nid,
 
 	finalise_ac(gfp_mask, &ac);
 
+	/*
+	 * Forbid the first pass from falling back to types that fragment
+	 * memory until all local zones are considered.
+	 */
+	alloc_flags |= alloc_flags_nofragment(ac.preferred_zoneref->zone);
+
 	/* First allocation attempt */
 	page = get_page_from_freelist(alloc_mask, order, alloc_flags, &ac);
 	if (likely(page))
-- 
2.16.4


^ permalink raw reply related	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* [PATCH 2/5] mm: Move zone watermark accesses behind an accessor
  2018-11-23 11:45 [PATCH 0/5] Fragmentation avoidance improvements v5 Mel Gorman
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 1/5] mm, page_alloc: Spread allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation Mel Gorman
@ 2018-11-23 11:45 ` Mel Gorman
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 3/5] mm: Use alloc_flags to record if kswapd can wake Mel Gorman
                   ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  4 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mel Gorman @ 2018-11-23 11:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Morton
  Cc: Vlastimil Babka, David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan,
	Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM, Mel Gorman

This is a preparation patch only, no functional change.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
---
 include/linux/mmzone.h |  9 +++++----
 mm/compaction.c        |  2 +-
 mm/page_alloc.c        | 12 ++++++------
 3 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
index 847705a6d0ec..e43e8e79db99 100644
--- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
+++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
@@ -269,9 +269,10 @@ enum zone_watermarks {
 	NR_WMARK
 };
 
-#define min_wmark_pages(z) (z->watermark[WMARK_MIN])
-#define low_wmark_pages(z) (z->watermark[WMARK_LOW])
-#define high_wmark_pages(z) (z->watermark[WMARK_HIGH])
+#define min_wmark_pages(z) (z->_watermark[WMARK_MIN])
+#define low_wmark_pages(z) (z->_watermark[WMARK_LOW])
+#define high_wmark_pages(z) (z->_watermark[WMARK_HIGH])
+#define wmark_pages(z, i) (z->_watermark[i])
 
 struct per_cpu_pages {
 	int count;		/* number of pages in the list */
@@ -362,7 +363,7 @@ struct zone {
 	/* Read-mostly fields */
 
 	/* zone watermarks, access with *_wmark_pages(zone) macros */
-	unsigned long watermark[NR_WMARK];
+	unsigned long _watermark[NR_WMARK];
 
 	unsigned long nr_reserved_highatomic;
 
diff --git a/mm/compaction.c b/mm/compaction.c
index 7c607479de4a..ef29490b0f46 100644
--- a/mm/compaction.c
+++ b/mm/compaction.c
@@ -1431,7 +1431,7 @@ static enum compact_result __compaction_suitable(struct zone *zone, int order,
 	if (is_via_compact_memory(order))
 		return COMPACT_CONTINUE;
 
-	watermark = zone->watermark[alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_MASK];
+	watermark = wmark_pages(zone, alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_MASK);
 	/*
 	 * If watermarks for high-order allocation are already met, there
 	 * should be no need for compaction at all.
diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index f86638aee96a..4ba84cd2977a 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -3376,7 +3376,7 @@ get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
 			}
 		}
 
-		mark = zone->watermark[alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_MASK];
+		mark = wmark_pages(zone, alloc_flags & ALLOC_WMARK_MASK);
 		if (!zone_watermark_fast(zone, order, mark,
 				       ac_classzone_idx(ac), alloc_flags)) {
 			int ret;
@@ -4796,7 +4796,7 @@ long si_mem_available(void)
 		pages[lru] = global_node_page_state(NR_LRU_BASE + lru);
 
 	for_each_zone(zone)
-		wmark_low += zone->watermark[WMARK_LOW];
+		wmark_low += low_wmark_pages(zone);
 
 	/*
 	 * Estimate the amount of memory available for userspace allocations,
@@ -7422,13 +7422,13 @@ static void __setup_per_zone_wmarks(void)
 
 			min_pages = zone->managed_pages / 1024;
 			min_pages = clamp(min_pages, SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX, 128UL);
-			zone->watermark[WMARK_MIN] = min_pages;
+			zone->_watermark[WMARK_MIN] = min_pages;
 		} else {
 			/*
 			 * If it's a lowmem zone, reserve a number of pages
 			 * proportionate to the zone's size.
 			 */
-			zone->watermark[WMARK_MIN] = tmp;
+			zone->_watermark[WMARK_MIN] = tmp;
 		}
 
 		/*
@@ -7440,8 +7440,8 @@ static void __setup_per_zone_wmarks(void)
 			    mult_frac(zone->managed_pages,
 				      watermark_scale_factor, 10000));
 
-		zone->watermark[WMARK_LOW]  = min_wmark_pages(zone) + tmp;
-		zone->watermark[WMARK_HIGH] = min_wmark_pages(zone) + tmp * 2;
+		zone->_watermark[WMARK_LOW]  = min_wmark_pages(zone) + tmp;
+		zone->_watermark[WMARK_HIGH] = min_wmark_pages(zone) + tmp * 2;
 
 		spin_unlock_irqrestore(&zone->lock, flags);
 	}
-- 
2.16.4


^ permalink raw reply related	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* [PATCH 3/5] mm: Use alloc_flags to record if kswapd can wake
  2018-11-23 11:45 [PATCH 0/5] Fragmentation avoidance improvements v5 Mel Gorman
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 1/5] mm, page_alloc: Spread allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation Mel Gorman
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 2/5] mm: Move zone watermark accesses behind an accessor Mel Gorman
@ 2018-11-23 11:45 ` Mel Gorman
  2018-11-26 13:38   ` Vlastimil Babka
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 4/5] mm: Reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs Mel Gorman
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 5/5] mm: Stall movable allocations until kswapd progresses during serious external fragmentation event Mel Gorman
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mel Gorman @ 2018-11-23 11:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Morton
  Cc: Vlastimil Babka, David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan,
	Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM, Mel Gorman

This is a preparation patch that copies the GFP flag __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM
into alloc_flags. This is a preparation patch only that avoids having to
pass gfp_mask through a long callchain in a future patch.

Note that the setting in the fast path happens in alloc_flags_nofragment()
and it may be claimed that this has nothing to do with ALLOC_NO_FRAGMENT.
That's true in this patch but is not true later so it's done now for
easier review to show where the flag needs to be recorded.

No functional change.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
---
 mm/internal.h   |  1 +
 mm/page_alloc.c | 25 +++++++++++++++++--------
 2 files changed, 18 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/internal.h b/mm/internal.h
index 544355156c92..be826ee9dc7f 100644
--- a/mm/internal.h
+++ b/mm/internal.h
@@ -489,6 +489,7 @@ unsigned long reclaim_clean_pages_from_list(struct zone *zone,
 #else
 #define ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT	  0x0
 #endif
+#define ALLOC_KSWAPD		0x200 /* allow waking of kswapd */
 
 enum ttu_flags;
 struct tlbflush_unmap_batch;
diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index 4ba84cd2977a..e44eb68744ed 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -3278,10 +3278,15 @@ static bool zone_allows_reclaim(struct zone *local_zone, struct zone *zone)
  * fragmentation between the Normal and DMA32 zones.
  */
 static inline unsigned int
-alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone)
+alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask)
 {
+	unsigned int alloc_flags = 0;
+
+	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM)
+		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_KSWAPD;
+
 	if (zone_idx(zone) != ZONE_NORMAL)
-		return 0;
+		goto out;
 
 	/*
 	 * If ZONE_DMA32 exists, assume it is the one after ZONE_NORMAL and
@@ -3290,13 +3295,14 @@ alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone)
 	 */
 	BUILD_BUG_ON(ZONE_NORMAL - ZONE_DMA32 != 1);
 	if (nr_online_nodes > 1 && !populated_zone(--zone))
-		return 0;
+		goto out;
 
-	return ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT;
+out:
+	return alloc_flags;
 }
 #else
 static inline unsigned int
-alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone)
+alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask)
 {
 	return 0;
 }
@@ -3939,6 +3945,9 @@ gfp_to_alloc_flags(gfp_t gfp_mask)
 	} else if (unlikely(rt_task(current)) && !in_interrupt())
 		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_HARDER;
 
+	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM)
+		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_KSWAPD;
+
 #ifdef CONFIG_CMA
 	if (gfpflags_to_migratetype(gfp_mask) == MIGRATE_MOVABLE)
 		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_CMA;
@@ -4170,7 +4179,7 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
 	if (!ac->preferred_zoneref->zone)
 		goto nopage;
 
-	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM)
+	if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_KSWAPD)
 		wake_all_kswapds(order, gfp_mask, ac);
 
 	/*
@@ -4228,7 +4237,7 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
 
 retry:
 	/* Ensure kswapd doesn't accidentally go to sleep as long as we loop */
-	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM)
+	if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_KSWAPD)
 		wake_all_kswapds(order, gfp_mask, ac);
 
 	reserve_flags = __gfp_pfmemalloc_flags(gfp_mask);
@@ -4451,7 +4460,7 @@ __alloc_pages_nodemask(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int preferred_nid,
 	 * Forbid the first pass from falling back to types that fragment
 	 * memory until all local zones are considered.
 	 */
-	alloc_flags |= alloc_flags_nofragment(ac.preferred_zoneref->zone);
+	alloc_flags |= alloc_flags_nofragment(ac.preferred_zoneref->zone, gfp_mask);
 
 	/* First allocation attempt */
 	page = get_page_from_freelist(alloc_mask, order, alloc_flags, &ac);
-- 
2.16.4


^ permalink raw reply related	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* [PATCH 4/5] mm: Reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs
  2018-11-23 11:45 [PATCH 0/5] Fragmentation avoidance improvements v5 Mel Gorman
                   ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 3/5] mm: Use alloc_flags to record if kswapd can wake Mel Gorman
@ 2018-11-23 11:45 ` Mel Gorman
  2018-11-27  9:23   ` Vlastimil Babka
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 5/5] mm: Stall movable allocations until kswapd progresses during serious external fragmentation event Mel Gorman
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mel Gorman @ 2018-11-23 11:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Morton
  Cc: Vlastimil Babka, David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan,
	Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM, Mel Gorman

An external fragmentation event was previously described as

    When the page allocator fragments memory, it records the event using
    the mm_page_alloc_extfrag event. If the fallback_order is smaller
    than a pageblock order (order-9 on 64-bit x86) then it's considered
    an event that will cause external fragmentation issues in the future.

The kernel reduces the probability of such events by increasing the
watermark sizes by calling set_recommended_min_free_kbytes early in the
lifetime of the system. This works reasonably well in general but if there
are enough sparsely populated pageblocks then the problem can still occur
as enough memory is free overall and kswapd stays asleep.

This patch introduces a watermark_boost_factor sysctl that allows a zone
watermark to be temporarily boosted when an external fragmentation causing
events occurs. The boosting will stall allocations that would decrease
free memory below the boosted low watermark and kswapd is woken if the
calling context allows to reclaim an amount of memory relative to the
size of the high watermark and the watermark_boost_factor until the boost
is cleared. When kswapd finishes, it wakes kcompactd at the pageblock
order to clean some of the pageblocks that may have been affected by
the fragmentation event. kswapd avoids any writeback, slab shrinkage and
swap from reclaim context during this operation to avoid excessive system
disruption in the name of fragmentation avoidance. Care is taken so that
kswapd will do normal reclaim work if the system is really low on memory.

This was evaluated using the same workloads as "mm, page_alloc: Spread
allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation".

1-socket Skylake machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 1 THP allocating thread
--------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:   804694
4.20-rc3+patch:                      408912 (49% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                    18421 (98% reduction)

                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-1      653.58 (   0.00%)      652.71 (   0.13%)
Amean     fault-huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)      178.93 * -99.00%*

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                            lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Percentage huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)        5.12 ( 100.00%)

Note that external fragmentation causing events are massively reduced
by this path whether in comparison to the previous kernel or the vanilla
kernel. The fault latency for huge pages appears to be increased but that
is only because THP allocations were successful with the patch applied.

1-socket Skylake machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  291392
4.20-rc3+patch:                     191187 (34% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   13464 (95% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Min       fault-base-1      912.00 (   0.00%)      905.00 (   0.77%)
Min       fault-huge-1      127.00 (   0.00%)      135.00 (  -6.30%)
Amean     fault-base-1     1467.55 (   0.00%)     1481.67 (  -0.96%)
Amean     fault-huge-1     1127.11 (   0.00%)     1063.88 *   5.61%*

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                            lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Percentage huge-1       77.64 (   0.00%)       83.46 (   7.49%)

As before, massive reduction in external fragmentation events, some jitter
on latencies and an increase in THP allocation success rates.

2-socket Haswell machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 5 THP allocating threads
----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  215698
4.20-rc3+patch:                     200210 (7% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   14263 (93% reduction)

                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     1346.45 (   0.00%)     1306.87 (   2.94%)
Amean     fault-huge-5     3418.60 (   0.00%)     1348.94 (  60.54%)

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                            lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Percentage huge-5        0.78 (   0.00%)        7.91 ( 910.64%)

There is a 93% reduction in fragmentation causing events, there
is a big reduction in the huge page fault latency and allocation
success rate is higher.

2-socket Haswell machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9: 166352
4.20-rc3+patch:                    147463 (11% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                  11095 (93% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     6217.43 (   0.00%)     7419.67 * -19.34%*
Amean     fault-huge-5     3163.33 (   0.00%)     3263.80 (  -3.18%)

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                            lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
Percentage huge-5       95.14 (   0.00%)       87.98 (  -7.53%)

There is a large reduction in fragmentation events with some jitter around
the latencies and success rates. As before, the high THP allocation
success rate does mean the system is under a lot of pressure. However,
as the fragmentation events are reduced, it would be expected that the
long-term allocation success rate would be higher.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
---
 Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt |  21 +++++++
 include/linux/mm.h          |   1 +
 include/linux/mmzone.h      |  11 ++--
 kernel/sysctl.c             |   8 +++
 mm/page_alloc.c             |  43 +++++++++++++-
 mm/vmscan.c                 | 133 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
 6 files changed, 202 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
index 7d73882e2c27..187ce4f599a2 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -63,6 +63,7 @@ files can be found in mm/swap.c.
 - swappiness
 - user_reserve_kbytes
 - vfs_cache_pressure
+- watermark_boost_factor
 - watermark_scale_factor
 - zone_reclaim_mode
 
@@ -856,6 +857,26 @@ ten times more freeable objects than there are.
 
 =============================================================
 
+watermark_boost_factor:
+
+This factor controls the level of reclaim when memory is being fragmented.
+It defines the percentage of the high watermark of a zone that will be
+reclaimed if pages of different mobility are being mixed within pageblocks.
+The intent is that compaction has less work to do in the future and to
+increase the success rate of future high-order allocations such as SLUB
+allocations, THP and hugetlbfs pages.
+
+To make it sensible with respect to the watermark_scale_factor parameter,
+the unit is in fractions of 10,000. The default value of 15,000 means
+that up to 150% of the high watermark will be reclaimed in the event of
+a pageblock being mixed due to fragmentation. The level of reclaim is
+determined by the number of fragmentation events that occurred in the
+recent past. If this value is smaller than a pageblock then a pageblocks
+worth of pages will be reclaimed (e.g.  2MB on 64-bit x86). A boost factor
+of 0 will disable the feature.
+
+=============================================================
+
 watermark_scale_factor:
 
 This factor controls the aggressiveness of kswapd. It defines the
diff --git a/include/linux/mm.h b/include/linux/mm.h
index 5411de93a363..2c4c69508413 100644
--- a/include/linux/mm.h
+++ b/include/linux/mm.h
@@ -2202,6 +2202,7 @@ extern void zone_pcp_reset(struct zone *zone);
 
 /* page_alloc.c */
 extern int min_free_kbytes;
+extern int watermark_boost_factor;
 extern int watermark_scale_factor;
 
 /* nommu.c */
diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
index e43e8e79db99..d352c1dab486 100644
--- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
+++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
@@ -269,10 +269,10 @@ enum zone_watermarks {
 	NR_WMARK
 };
 
-#define min_wmark_pages(z) (z->_watermark[WMARK_MIN])
-#define low_wmark_pages(z) (z->_watermark[WMARK_LOW])
-#define high_wmark_pages(z) (z->_watermark[WMARK_HIGH])
-#define wmark_pages(z, i) (z->_watermark[i])
+#define min_wmark_pages(z) (z->_watermark[WMARK_MIN] + z->watermark_boost)
+#define low_wmark_pages(z) (z->_watermark[WMARK_LOW] + z->watermark_boost)
+#define high_wmark_pages(z) (z->_watermark[WMARK_HIGH] + z->watermark_boost)
+#define wmark_pages(z, i) (z->_watermark[i] + z->watermark_boost)
 
 struct per_cpu_pages {
 	int count;		/* number of pages in the list */
@@ -364,6 +364,7 @@ struct zone {
 
 	/* zone watermarks, access with *_wmark_pages(zone) macros */
 	unsigned long _watermark[NR_WMARK];
+	unsigned long watermark_boost;
 
 	unsigned long nr_reserved_highatomic;
 
@@ -885,6 +886,8 @@ static inline int is_highmem(struct zone *zone)
 struct ctl_table;
 int min_free_kbytes_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *, int,
 					void __user *, size_t *, loff_t *);
+int watermark_boost_factor_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *, int,
+					void __user *, size_t *, loff_t *);
 int watermark_scale_factor_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *, int,
 					void __user *, size_t *, loff_t *);
 extern int sysctl_lowmem_reserve_ratio[MAX_NR_ZONES];
diff --git a/kernel/sysctl.c b/kernel/sysctl.c
index 5fc724e4e454..1825f712e73b 100644
--- a/kernel/sysctl.c
+++ b/kernel/sysctl.c
@@ -1462,6 +1462,14 @@ static struct ctl_table vm_table[] = {
 		.proc_handler	= min_free_kbytes_sysctl_handler,
 		.extra1		= &zero,
 	},
+	{
+		.procname	= "watermark_boost_factor",
+		.data		= &watermark_boost_factor,
+		.maxlen		= sizeof(watermark_boost_factor),
+		.mode		= 0644,
+		.proc_handler	= watermark_boost_factor_sysctl_handler,
+		.extra1		= &zero,
+	},
 	{
 		.procname	= "watermark_scale_factor",
 		.data		= &watermark_scale_factor,
diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index e44eb68744ed..f9af2a79b1cd 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -263,6 +263,7 @@ compound_page_dtor * const compound_page_dtors[] = {
 
 int min_free_kbytes = 1024;
 int user_min_free_kbytes = -1;
+int watermark_boost_factor __read_mostly = 15000;
 int watermark_scale_factor = 10;
 
 static unsigned long nr_kernel_pages __meminitdata;
@@ -2129,6 +2130,21 @@ static bool can_steal_fallback(unsigned int order, int start_mt)
 	return false;
 }
 
+static inline void boost_watermark(struct zone *zone)
+{
+	unsigned long max_boost;
+
+	if (!watermark_boost_factor)
+		return;
+
+	max_boost = mult_frac(zone->_watermark[WMARK_HIGH],
+			watermark_boost_factor, 10000);
+	max_boost = max(pageblock_nr_pages, max_boost);
+
+	zone->watermark_boost = min(zone->watermark_boost + pageblock_nr_pages,
+		max_boost);
+}
+
 /*
  * This function implements actual steal behaviour. If order is large enough,
  * we can steal whole pageblock. If not, we first move freepages in this
@@ -2138,7 +2154,7 @@ static bool can_steal_fallback(unsigned int order, int start_mt)
  * itself, so pages freed in the future will be put on the correct free list.
  */
 static void steal_suitable_fallback(struct zone *zone, struct page *page,
-					int start_type, bool whole_block)
+		unsigned int alloc_flags, int start_type, bool whole_block)
 {
 	unsigned int current_order = page_order(page);
 	struct free_area *area;
@@ -2160,6 +2176,15 @@ static void steal_suitable_fallback(struct zone *zone, struct page *page,
 		goto single_page;
 	}
 
+	/*
+	 * Boost watermarks to increase reclaim pressure to reduce the
+	 * likelihood of future fallbacks. Wake kswapd now as the node
+	 * may be balanced overall and kswapd will not wake naturally.
+	 */
+	boost_watermark(zone);
+	if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_KSWAPD)
+		wakeup_kswapd(zone, 0, 0, zone_idx(zone));
+
 	/* We are not allowed to try stealing from the whole block */
 	if (!whole_block)
 		goto single_page;
@@ -2443,7 +2468,8 @@ __rmqueue_fallback(struct zone *zone, int order, int start_migratetype,
 	page = list_first_entry(&area->free_list[fallback_mt],
 							struct page, lru);
 
-	steal_suitable_fallback(zone, page, start_migratetype, can_steal);
+	steal_suitable_fallback(zone, page, alloc_flags, start_migratetype,
+								can_steal);
 
 	trace_mm_page_alloc_extfrag(page, order, current_order,
 		start_migratetype, fallback_mt);
@@ -7451,6 +7477,7 @@ static void __setup_per_zone_wmarks(void)
 
 		zone->_watermark[WMARK_LOW]  = min_wmark_pages(zone) + tmp;
 		zone->_watermark[WMARK_HIGH] = min_wmark_pages(zone) + tmp * 2;
+		zone->watermark_boost = 0;
 
 		spin_unlock_irqrestore(&zone->lock, flags);
 	}
@@ -7551,6 +7578,18 @@ int min_free_kbytes_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
 	return 0;
 }
 
+int watermark_boost_factor_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
+	void __user *buffer, size_t *length, loff_t *ppos)
+{
+	int rc;
+
+	rc = proc_dointvec_minmax(table, write, buffer, length, ppos);
+	if (rc)
+		return rc;
+
+	return 0;
+}
+
 int watermark_scale_factor_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
 	void __user *buffer, size_t *length, loff_t *ppos)
 {
diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index 62ac0c488624..4c96b6356398 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -87,6 +87,9 @@ struct scan_control {
 	/* Can pages be swapped as part of reclaim? */
 	unsigned int may_swap:1;
 
+	/* e.g. boosted watermark reclaim leaves slabs alone */
+	unsigned int may_shrinkslab:1;
+
 	/*
 	 * Cgroups are not reclaimed below their configured memory.low,
 	 * unless we threaten to OOM. If any cgroups are skipped due to
@@ -2755,8 +2758,10 @@ static bool shrink_node(pg_data_t *pgdat, struct scan_control *sc)
 			shrink_node_memcg(pgdat, memcg, sc, &lru_pages);
 			node_lru_pages += lru_pages;
 
-			shrink_slab(sc->gfp_mask, pgdat->node_id,
+			if (sc->may_shrinkslab) {
+				shrink_slab(sc->gfp_mask, pgdat->node_id,
 				    memcg, sc->priority);
+			}
 
 			/* Record the group's reclaim efficiency */
 			vmpressure(sc->gfp_mask, memcg, false,
@@ -3238,6 +3243,7 @@ unsigned long try_to_free_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist, int order,
 		.may_writepage = !laptop_mode,
 		.may_unmap = 1,
 		.may_swap = 1,
+		.may_shrinkslab = 1,
 	};
 
 	/*
@@ -3282,6 +3288,7 @@ unsigned long mem_cgroup_shrink_node(struct mem_cgroup *memcg,
 		.may_unmap = 1,
 		.reclaim_idx = MAX_NR_ZONES - 1,
 		.may_swap = !noswap,
+		.may_shrinkslab = 1,
 	};
 	unsigned long lru_pages;
 
@@ -3328,6 +3335,7 @@ unsigned long try_to_free_mem_cgroup_pages(struct mem_cgroup *memcg,
 		.may_writepage = !laptop_mode,
 		.may_unmap = 1,
 		.may_swap = may_swap,
+		.may_shrinkslab = 1,
 	};
 
 	/*
@@ -3378,6 +3386,30 @@ static void age_active_anon(struct pglist_data *pgdat,
 	} while (memcg);
 }
 
+static bool pgdat_watermark_boosted(pg_data_t *pgdat, int classzone_idx)
+{
+	int i;
+	struct zone *zone;
+
+	/*
+	 * Check for watermark boosts top-down as the higher zones
+	 * are more likely to be boosted. Both watermarks and boosts
+	 * should not be checked at the time time as reclaim would
+	 * start prematurely when there is no boosting and a lower
+	 * zone is balanced.
+	 */
+	for (i = classzone_idx; i >= 0; i--) {
+		zone = pgdat->node_zones + i;
+		if (!managed_zone(zone))
+			continue;
+
+		if (zone->watermark_boost)
+			return true;
+	}
+
+	return false;
+}
+
 /*
  * Returns true if there is an eligible zone balanced for the request order
  * and classzone_idx
@@ -3388,6 +3420,10 @@ static bool pgdat_balanced(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int classzone_idx)
 	unsigned long mark = -1;
 	struct zone *zone;
 
+	/*
+	 * Check watermarks bottom-up as lower zones are more likely to
+	 * meet watermarks.
+	 */
 	for (i = 0; i <= classzone_idx; i++) {
 		zone = pgdat->node_zones + i;
 
@@ -3516,14 +3552,14 @@ static int balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int classzone_idx)
 	unsigned long nr_soft_reclaimed;
 	unsigned long nr_soft_scanned;
 	unsigned long pflags;
+	unsigned long nr_boost_reclaim;
+	unsigned long zone_boosts[MAX_NR_ZONES] = { 0, };
+	bool boosted;
 	struct zone *zone;
 	struct scan_control sc = {
 		.gfp_mask = GFP_KERNEL,
 		.order = order,
-		.priority = DEF_PRIORITY,
-		.may_writepage = !laptop_mode,
 		.may_unmap = 1,
-		.may_swap = 1,
 	};
 
 	psi_memstall_enter(&pflags);
@@ -3531,9 +3567,28 @@ static int balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int classzone_idx)
 
 	count_vm_event(PAGEOUTRUN);
 
+	/*
+	 * Account for the reclaim boost. Note that the zone boost is left in
+	 * place so that parallel allocations that are near the watermark will
+	 * stall or direct reclaim until kswapd is finished.
+	 */
+	nr_boost_reclaim = 0;
+	for (i = 0; i <= classzone_idx; i++) {
+		zone = pgdat->node_zones + i;
+		if (!managed_zone(zone))
+			continue;
+
+		nr_boost_reclaim += zone->watermark_boost;
+		zone_boosts[i] = zone->watermark_boost;
+	}
+	boosted = nr_boost_reclaim;
+
+restart:
+	sc.priority = DEF_PRIORITY;
 	do {
 		unsigned long nr_reclaimed = sc.nr_reclaimed;
 		bool raise_priority = true;
+		bool balanced;
 		bool ret;
 
 		sc.reclaim_idx = classzone_idx;
@@ -3560,13 +3615,40 @@ static int balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int classzone_idx)
 		}
 
 		/*
-		 * Only reclaim if there are no eligible zones. Note that
-		 * sc.reclaim_idx is not used as buffer_heads_over_limit may
-		 * have adjusted it.
+		 * If the pgdat is imbalanced then ignore boosting and preserve
+		 * the watermarks for a later time and restart. Note that the
+		 * zone watermarks will be still reset at the end of balancing
+		 * on the grounds that the normal reclaim should be enough to
+		 * re-evaluate if boosting is required when kswapd next wakes.
+		 */
+		balanced = pgdat_balanced(pgdat, sc.order, classzone_idx);
+		if (!balanced && nr_boost_reclaim) {
+			nr_boost_reclaim = 0;
+			goto restart;
+		}
+
+		/*
+		 * If boosting is not active then only reclaim if there are no
+		 * eligible zones. Note that sc.reclaim_idx is not used as
+		 * buffer_heads_over_limit may have adjusted it.
 		 */
-		if (pgdat_balanced(pgdat, sc.order, classzone_idx))
+		if (!nr_boost_reclaim && balanced)
 			goto out;
 
+		/* Limit the priority of boosting to avoid reclaim writeback */
+		if (nr_boost_reclaim && sc.priority == DEF_PRIORITY - 2)
+			raise_priority = false;
+
+		/*
+		 * Do not writeback or swap pages for boosted reclaim. The
+		 * intent is to relieve pressure not issue sub-optimal IO
+		 * from reclaim context. If no pages are reclaimed, the
+		 * reclaim will be aborted.
+		 */
+		sc.may_writepage = !laptop_mode && !nr_boost_reclaim;
+		sc.may_swap = !nr_boost_reclaim;
+		sc.may_shrinkslab = !nr_boost_reclaim;
+
 		/*
 		 * Do some background aging of the anon list, to give
 		 * pages a chance to be referenced before reclaiming. All
@@ -3618,6 +3700,16 @@ static int balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int classzone_idx)
 		 * progress in reclaiming pages
 		 */
 		nr_reclaimed = sc.nr_reclaimed - nr_reclaimed;
+		nr_boost_reclaim -= min(nr_boost_reclaim, nr_reclaimed);
+
+		/*
+		 * If reclaim made no progress for a boost, stop reclaim as
+		 * IO cannot be queued and it could be an infinite loop in
+		 * extreme circumstances.
+		 */
+		if (nr_boost_reclaim && !nr_reclaimed)
+			break;
+
 		if (raise_priority || !nr_reclaimed)
 			sc.priority--;
 	} while (sc.priority >= 1);
@@ -3626,6 +3718,28 @@ static int balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int classzone_idx)
 		pgdat->kswapd_failures++;
 
 out:
+	/* If reclaim was boosted, account for the reclaim done in this pass */
+	if (boosted) {
+		unsigned long flags;
+
+		for (i = 0; i <= classzone_idx; i++) {
+			if (!zone_boosts[i])
+				continue;
+
+			/* Increments are under the zone lock */
+			zone = pgdat->node_zones + i;
+			spin_lock_irqsave(&zone->lock, flags);
+			zone->watermark_boost -= min(zone->watermark_boost, zone_boosts[i]);
+			spin_unlock_irqrestore(&zone->lock, flags);
+		}
+
+		/*
+		 * As there is now likely space, wakeup kcompact to defragment
+		 * pageblocks.
+		 */
+		wakeup_kcompactd(pgdat, pageblock_order, classzone_idx);
+	}
+
 	snapshot_refaults(NULL, pgdat);
 	__fs_reclaim_release();
 	psi_memstall_leave(&pflags);
@@ -3854,7 +3968,8 @@ void wakeup_kswapd(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_flags, int order,
 
 	/* Hopeless node, leave it to direct reclaim if possible */
 	if (pgdat->kswapd_failures >= MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES ||
-	    pgdat_balanced(pgdat, order, classzone_idx)) {
+	    (pgdat_balanced(pgdat, order, classzone_idx) &&
+	     !pgdat_watermark_boosted(pgdat, classzone_idx))) {
 		/*
 		 * There may be plenty of free memory available, but it's too
 		 * fragmented for high-order allocations.  Wake up kcompactd
-- 
2.16.4


^ permalink raw reply related	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* [PATCH 5/5] mm: Stall movable allocations until kswapd progresses during serious external fragmentation event
  2018-11-23 11:45 [PATCH 0/5] Fragmentation avoidance improvements v5 Mel Gorman
                   ` (3 preceding siblings ...)
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 4/5] mm: Reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs Mel Gorman
@ 2018-11-23 11:45 ` Mel Gorman
  2018-11-27 13:20   ` Vlastimil Babka
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mel Gorman @ 2018-11-23 11:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Morton
  Cc: Vlastimil Babka, David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan,
	Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM, Mel Gorman

An event that potentially causes external fragmentation problems has
already been described but there are degrees of severity.  A "serious"
event is defined as one that steals a contiguous range of pages of an order
lower than fragment_stall_order (PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER by default). If a
movable allocation request that is allowed to sleep needs to steal a small
block then it schedules until kswapd makes progress or a timeout passes.
The watermarks are also boosted slightly faster so that kswapd makes
greater effort to reclaim enough pages to avoid the fragmentation event.

This stall is not guaranteed to avoid serious fragmentation events.
If memory pressure is high enough, the pages freed by kswapd may be
reallocated or the free pages may not be in pageblocks that contain
only movable pages. Furthermore an allocation request that cannot stall
(e.g. atomic allocations) or unmovable/reclaimable allocations will still
proceed without stalling. The reason is that movable allocations can be
migrated and stalling for kswapd to make progress means that compaction
has targets. Unmovable/reclaimable allocations on the other hand do not
benefit from stalling as their pages cannot move.

The worst-case scenario for stalling is a combination of both high memory
pressure where kswapd is having trouble keeping free pages over the
pfmemalloc_reserve and movable allocations are fragmenting memory. In this
case, an allocation request may sleep for longer. There are both vmstats
to identify stalls are happening and a tracepoint to quantify what the
stall durations are. Note that the granularity of the stall detection is
a jiffy so the delay accounting is not precise.

1-socket Skylake machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 1 THP allocating thread
--------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:   804694
4.20-rc3+patch:                      408912 (49% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                    18421 (98% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-5:                    16788 (98% reduction)

                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                   boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-1      652.71 (   0.00%)      651.40 (   0.20%)
Amean     fault-huge-1      178.93 (   0.00%)      174.49 *   2.48%*

thpfioscale Percentage Faults Huge
                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                              boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
Percentage huge-1        5.12 (   0.00%)        5.56 (   8.77%)

Fragmentation events are further reduced. Note that in previous versions,
it was reduced to negligible levels but the logic has been corrected
to avoid exceessive reclaim and slab shrinkage in the meantime to avoid
IO regressions that may not be tolerable.

The latencies and allocation success rates are roughly similar.  Over the
course of 16 minutes, there were 2 stalls due to fragmentation avoidance
for 8 microseconds.

1-socket Skylake machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  291392
4.20-rc3+patch:                     191187 (34% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   13464 (95% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-5:                   15089 (99.7% reduction)

                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                   boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-1     1481.67 (   0.00%)        0.00 * 100.00%*
Amean     fault-huge-1     1063.88 (   0.00%)      540.81 *  49.17%*

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                              boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
Percentage huge-1       83.46 (   0.00%)      100.00 (  19.82%)

The fragmentation events were increased which is bad, but this is offset
by the fact that THP allocation rates had a lower latency and a perfect
allocation success rate. There were 102 stalls over the course of 16
minutes for a total stall time of roughly 0.4 seconds.

2-socket Haswell machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 5 THP allocating threads
----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  215698
4.20-rc3+patch:                     200210 (7% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   14263 (93% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-5:                   11702 (95% reduction)

                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                   boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     1306.87 (   0.00%)     1340.96 (  -2.61%)
Amean     fault-huge-5     1348.94 (   0.00%)     2089.44 ( -54.89%)

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                              boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
Percentage huge-5        7.91 (   0.00%)        2.43 ( -69.26%)

There is a slight reduction in fragmentation events but it's slight
enough that it may be due to luck. Unfortunately, both the latencies
and success rates were lower. However, this is highly likely to be due
to luck given that there were just 12 stalls for 76 microseconds. Direct
reclaim was also eliminated but that is likely a co-incidence.

2-socket Haswell machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9: 166352
4.20-rc3+patch:                    147463 (11% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                  11095 (93% reduction)
4.20-rc3+patch1-5:                  10677 (94% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                   boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     7419.67 (   0.00%)     6853.97 (   7.62%)
Amean     fault-huge-5     3263.80 (   0.00%)     1799.26 *  44.87%*

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                              boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
Percentage huge-5       87.98 (   0.00%)       98.97 (  12.49%)

The fragmentation events are slightly reduced with the latencies and
allocation success rates much improved.  There were 462 stalls over the
course of 68 minutes with a total stall time of roughly 1.9 seconds.

This patch has a marginal rate on fragmentation rates as it's rare for
the stall logic to actually trigger but the small stalls can be enough for
kswapd to catch up. How much that helps is variable but probably worthwhile
for long-term allocation success rates. It is possible to eliminate
fragmentation events entirely with tuning due to this patch although that
would require careful evaluation to determine if it's worthwhile.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
---
 Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt   |  23 +++++++++
 include/linux/mm.h            |   1 +
 include/linux/mmzone.h        |   2 +
 include/linux/vm_event_item.h |   1 +
 include/trace/events/kmem.h   |  21 +++++++++
 kernel/sysctl.c               |  10 ++++
 mm/internal.h                 |   1 +
 mm/page_alloc.c               | 105 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
 mm/vmscan.c                   |   3 +-
 mm/vmstat.c                   |   1 +
 10 files changed, 155 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
index 187ce4f599a2..d07e2f01f429 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ files can be found in mm/swap.c.
 - dirty_writeback_centisecs
 - drop_caches
 - extfrag_threshold
+- fragment_stall_order
 - hugetlb_shm_group
 - laptop_mode
 - legacy_va_layout
@@ -275,6 +276,28 @@ any throttling.
 
 ==============================================================
 
+fragment_stall_order
+
+External fragmentation control is managed on a pageblock level where the
+page allocator tries to avoid mixing pages of different mobility within page
+blocks (e.g. order 9 on 64-bit x86). If external fragmentation is perfectly
+controlled then a THP allocation will often succeed up to the number of
+movable pageblocks in the system as reported by /proc/pagetypeinfo.
+
+When memory is low, the system may have to mix pageblocks and will wake
+kswapd to try control future fragmentation. fragment_stall_order controls if
+the allocating task will stall if possible until kswapd makes some progress
+in preference to fragmenting the system. This incurs a small stall penalty
+in exchange for future success at allocating huge pages. If the stalls
+are undesirable and high-order allocations are irrelevant then this can
+be disabled by writing 0 to the tunable. Writing the pageblock order will
+strongly (but not perfectly) control external fragmentation.
+
+The default (4) will stall for fragmenting allocations less than or equal
+to the PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER (defined as order-3 at the time of writing).
+
+==============================================================
+
 hugetlb_shm_group
 
 hugetlb_shm_group contains group id that is allowed to create SysV
diff --git a/include/linux/mm.h b/include/linux/mm.h
index 2c4c69508413..2b72de790ef9 100644
--- a/include/linux/mm.h
+++ b/include/linux/mm.h
@@ -2204,6 +2204,7 @@ extern void zone_pcp_reset(struct zone *zone);
 extern int min_free_kbytes;
 extern int watermark_boost_factor;
 extern int watermark_scale_factor;
+extern int fragment_stall_order;
 
 /* nommu.c */
 extern atomic_long_t mmap_pages_allocated;
diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
index d352c1dab486..cffec484ac8a 100644
--- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
+++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
@@ -890,6 +890,8 @@ int watermark_boost_factor_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *, int,
 					void __user *, size_t *, loff_t *);
 int watermark_scale_factor_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *, int,
 					void __user *, size_t *, loff_t *);
+int fragment_stall_order_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *, int,
+					void __user *, size_t *, loff_t *);
 extern int sysctl_lowmem_reserve_ratio[MAX_NR_ZONES];
 int lowmem_reserve_ratio_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *, int,
 					void __user *, size_t *, loff_t *);
diff --git a/include/linux/vm_event_item.h b/include/linux/vm_event_item.h
index 47a3441cf4c4..7661abe5236e 100644
--- a/include/linux/vm_event_item.h
+++ b/include/linux/vm_event_item.h
@@ -43,6 +43,7 @@ enum vm_event_item { PGPGIN, PGPGOUT, PSWPIN, PSWPOUT,
 		PAGEOUTRUN, PGROTATED,
 		DROP_PAGECACHE, DROP_SLAB,
 		OOM_KILL,
+		FRAGMENTSTALL,
 #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA_BALANCING
 		NUMA_PTE_UPDATES,
 		NUMA_HUGE_PTE_UPDATES,
diff --git a/include/trace/events/kmem.h b/include/trace/events/kmem.h
index eb57e3037deb..caadd8681ac5 100644
--- a/include/trace/events/kmem.h
+++ b/include/trace/events/kmem.h
@@ -315,6 +315,27 @@ TRACE_EVENT(mm_page_alloc_extfrag,
 		__entry->change_ownership)
 );
 
+TRACE_EVENT(mm_fragmentation_stall,
+
+	TP_PROTO(int nid, unsigned long duration),
+
+	TP_ARGS(nid, duration),
+
+	TP_STRUCT__entry(
+		__field(	int,		nid		)
+		__field(	unsigned long,	duration	)
+	),
+
+	TP_fast_assign(
+		__entry->nid		= nid;
+		__entry->duration	= duration
+	),
+
+	TP_printk("nid=%d duration=%lu",
+		__entry->nid,
+		__entry->duration)
+);
+
 #endif /* _TRACE_KMEM_H */
 
 /* This part must be outside protection */
diff --git a/kernel/sysctl.c b/kernel/sysctl.c
index 1825f712e73b..eb09c79ddbef 100644
--- a/kernel/sysctl.c
+++ b/kernel/sysctl.c
@@ -126,6 +126,7 @@ static int zero;
 static int __maybe_unused one = 1;
 static int __maybe_unused two = 2;
 static int __maybe_unused four = 4;
+static int __maybe_unused max_order = MAX_ORDER;
 static unsigned long one_ul = 1;
 static int one_hundred = 100;
 static int one_thousand = 1000;
@@ -1479,6 +1480,15 @@ static struct ctl_table vm_table[] = {
 		.extra1		= &one,
 		.extra2		= &one_thousand,
 	},
+	{
+		.procname	= "fragment_stall_order",
+		.data		= &fragment_stall_order,
+		.maxlen		= sizeof(fragment_stall_order),
+		.mode		= 0644,
+		.proc_handler	= fragment_stall_order_sysctl_handler,
+		.extra1		= &zero,
+		.extra2		= &max_order,
+	},
 	{
 		.procname	= "percpu_pagelist_fraction",
 		.data		= &percpu_pagelist_fraction,
diff --git a/mm/internal.h b/mm/internal.h
index be826ee9dc7f..236fa39b9835 100644
--- a/mm/internal.h
+++ b/mm/internal.h
@@ -490,6 +490,7 @@ unsigned long reclaim_clean_pages_from_list(struct zone *zone,
 #define ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT	  0x0
 #endif
 #define ALLOC_KSWAPD		0x200 /* allow waking of kswapd */
+#define ALLOC_FRAGMENT_STALL	0x400 /* stall if fragmenting heavily */
 
 enum ttu_flags;
 struct tlbflush_unmap_batch;
diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index f9af2a79b1cd..da56ecdfffa7 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -265,6 +265,7 @@ int min_free_kbytes = 1024;
 int user_min_free_kbytes = -1;
 int watermark_boost_factor __read_mostly = 15000;
 int watermark_scale_factor = 10;
+int fragment_stall_order __read_mostly = (PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER + 1);
 
 static unsigned long nr_kernel_pages __meminitdata;
 static unsigned long nr_all_pages __meminitdata;
@@ -2130,9 +2131,10 @@ static bool can_steal_fallback(unsigned int order, int start_mt)
 	return false;
 }
 
-static inline void boost_watermark(struct zone *zone)
+static inline void __boost_watermark(struct zone *zone, bool fast_boost)
 {
 	unsigned long max_boost;
+	unsigned long nr;
 
 	if (!watermark_boost_factor)
 		return;
@@ -2140,9 +2142,45 @@ static inline void boost_watermark(struct zone *zone)
 	max_boost = mult_frac(zone->_watermark[WMARK_HIGH],
 			watermark_boost_factor, 10000);
 	max_boost = max(pageblock_nr_pages, max_boost);
+	nr = pageblock_nr_pages;
 
-	zone->watermark_boost = min(zone->watermark_boost + pageblock_nr_pages,
-		max_boost);
+	/* Scale relative to the MIGRATE_PCPTYPES similar to min_free_kbytes */
+	if (fast_boost)
+		nr += pageblock_nr_pages * (MIGRATE_PCPTYPES << 1);
+
+	zone->watermark_boost = min(zone->watermark_boost + nr, max_boost);
+}
+
+static inline void boost_watermark(struct zone *zone, bool fast_boost)
+{
+	unsigned long flags;
+
+	spin_lock_irqsave(&zone->lock, flags);
+	__boost_watermark(zone, fast_boost);
+	spin_unlock_irqrestore(&zone->lock, flags);
+}
+
+static void stall_fragmentation(struct zone *pzone)
+{
+	DEFINE_WAIT(wait);
+	long remaining = 0;
+	long timeout = HZ/50;
+	pg_data_t *pgdat = pzone->zone_pgdat;
+
+	if (current->flags & PF_MEMALLOC)
+		return;
+
+	boost_watermark(pzone, true);
+	prepare_to_wait(&pgdat->pfmemalloc_wait, &wait, TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE);
+	if (waitqueue_active(&pgdat->kswapd_wait))
+		wake_up_interruptible(&pgdat->kswapd_wait);
+	remaining = schedule_timeout(timeout);
+	finish_wait(&pgdat->pfmemalloc_wait, &wait);
+	if (remaining != timeout) {
+		trace_mm_fragmentation_stall(pgdat->node_id,
+			jiffies_to_usecs(timeout - remaining));
+		count_vm_event(FRAGMENTSTALL);
+	}
 }
 
 /*
@@ -2153,7 +2191,7 @@ static inline void boost_watermark(struct zone *zone)
  * of pages are free or compatible, we can change migratetype of the pageblock
  * itself, so pages freed in the future will be put on the correct free list.
  */
-static void steal_suitable_fallback(struct zone *zone, struct page *page,
+static bool steal_suitable_fallback(struct zone *zone, struct page *page,
 		unsigned int alloc_flags, int start_type, bool whole_block)
 {
 	unsigned int current_order = page_order(page);
@@ -2181,10 +2219,15 @@ static void steal_suitable_fallback(struct zone *zone, struct page *page,
 	 * likelihood of future fallbacks. Wake kswapd now as the node
 	 * may be balanced overall and kswapd will not wake naturally.
 	 */
-	boost_watermark(zone);
+	__boost_watermark(zone, false);
 	if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_KSWAPD)
 		wakeup_kswapd(zone, 0, 0, zone_idx(zone));
 
+	if ((alloc_flags & ALLOC_FRAGMENT_STALL) &&
+	    current_order < fragment_stall_order) {
+		return false;
+	}
+
 	/* We are not allowed to try stealing from the whole block */
 	if (!whole_block)
 		goto single_page;
@@ -2225,11 +2268,12 @@ static void steal_suitable_fallback(struct zone *zone, struct page *page,
 			page_group_by_mobility_disabled)
 		set_pageblock_migratetype(page, start_type);
 
-	return;
+	return true;
 
 single_page:
 	area = &zone->free_area[current_order];
 	list_move(&page->lru, &area->free_list[start_type]);
+	return true;
 }
 
 /*
@@ -2468,14 +2512,15 @@ __rmqueue_fallback(struct zone *zone, int order, int start_migratetype,
 	page = list_first_entry(&area->free_list[fallback_mt],
 							struct page, lru);
 
-	steal_suitable_fallback(zone, page, alloc_flags, start_migratetype,
-								can_steal);
+	if (!steal_suitable_fallback(zone, page, alloc_flags,
+					start_migratetype, can_steal)) {
+		return false;
+	}
 
 	trace_mm_page_alloc_extfrag(page, order, current_order,
 		start_migratetype, fallback_mt);
 
 	return true;
-
 }
 
 /*
@@ -3343,9 +3388,11 @@ get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
 						const struct alloc_context *ac)
 {
 	struct zoneref *z;
+	struct zone *pzone;
 	struct zone *zone;
 	struct pglist_data *last_pgdat_dirty_limit = NULL;
 	bool no_fallback;
+	bool fragment_stall;
 
 retry:
 	/*
@@ -3353,7 +3400,10 @@ get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
 	 * See also __cpuset_node_allowed() comment in kernel/cpuset.c.
 	 */
 	no_fallback = alloc_flags & ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT;
+	fragment_stall = alloc_flags & ALLOC_FRAGMENT_STALL;
 	z = ac->preferred_zoneref;
+	pzone = z->zone;
+
 	for_next_zone_zonelist_nodemask(zone, z, ac->zonelist, ac->high_zoneidx,
 								ac->nodemask) {
 		struct page *page;
@@ -3392,7 +3442,7 @@ get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
 			}
 		}
 
-		if (no_fallback && nr_online_nodes > 1 &&
+		if ((no_fallback || fragment_stall) && nr_online_nodes > 1 &&
 		    zone != ac->preferred_zoneref->zone) {
 			int local_nid;
 
@@ -3401,9 +3451,12 @@ get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
 			 * fragmenting fallbacks. Locality is more important
 			 * than fragmentation avoidance.
 			 */
-			local_nid = zone_to_nid(ac->preferred_zoneref->zone);
+			local_nid = zone_to_nid(pzone);
 			if (zone_to_nid(zone) != local_nid) {
+				if (fragment_stall)
+					stall_fragmentation(pzone);
 				alloc_flags &= ~ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT;
+				alloc_flags &= ~ALLOC_FRAGMENT_STALL;
 				goto retry;
 			}
 		}
@@ -3479,8 +3532,12 @@ get_page_from_freelist(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
 	 * It's possible on a UMA machine to get through all zones that are
 	 * fragmented. If avoiding fragmentation, reset and try again.
 	 */
-	if (no_fallback) {
+	if (no_fallback || fragment_stall) {
+		if (fragment_stall)
+			stall_fragmentation(pzone);
+
 		alloc_flags &= ~ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT;
+		alloc_flags &= ~ALLOC_FRAGMENT_STALL;
 		goto retry;
 	}
 
@@ -4194,6 +4251,17 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
 	 */
 	alloc_flags = gfp_to_alloc_flags(gfp_mask);
 
+	/*
+	 * Consider stalling on heavy for movable allocations in preference to
+	 * fragmenting unmovable/reclaimable pageblocks. A caller that is
+	 * willing to direct reclaim is already willing to stall.
+	 * Unmovable/reclaimable allocations do not stall as kswapd is not
+	 * guaranteed to free pages in their respective pageblocks.
+	 */
+	if ((gfp_mask & (__GFP_MOVABLE|__GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM)) ==
+			(__GFP_MOVABLE|__GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM))
+		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_FRAGMENT_STALL;
+
 	/*
 	 * We need to recalculate the starting point for the zonelist iterator
 	 * because we might have used different nodemask in the fast path, or
@@ -4215,6 +4283,7 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
 	page = get_page_from_freelist(gfp_mask, order, alloc_flags, ac);
 	if (page)
 		goto got_pg;
+	alloc_flags &= ~ALLOC_FRAGMENT_STALL;
 
 	/*
 	 * For costly allocations, try direct compaction first, as it's likely
@@ -7590,6 +7659,18 @@ int watermark_boost_factor_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
 	return 0;
 }
 
+int fragment_stall_order_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
+	void __user *buffer, size_t *length, loff_t *ppos)
+{
+	int rc;
+
+	rc = proc_dointvec_minmax(table, write, buffer, length, ppos);
+	if (rc)
+		return rc;
+
+	return 0;
+}
+
 int watermark_scale_factor_sysctl_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
 	void __user *buffer, size_t *length, loff_t *ppos)
 {
diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index 4c96b6356398..c3350ed4ff7e 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -3685,7 +3685,8 @@ static int balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, int classzone_idx)
 		 * able to safely make forward progress. Wake them
 		 */
 		if (waitqueue_active(&pgdat->pfmemalloc_wait) &&
-				allow_direct_reclaim(pgdat))
+				((!raise_priority && nr_boost_reclaim) ||
+				 allow_direct_reclaim(pgdat)))
 			wake_up_all(&pgdat->pfmemalloc_wait);
 
 		/* Check if kswapd should be suspending */
diff --git a/mm/vmstat.c b/mm/vmstat.c
index 9c624595e904..6cc7755c6eb1 100644
--- a/mm/vmstat.c
+++ b/mm/vmstat.c
@@ -1211,6 +1211,7 @@ const char * const vmstat_text[] = {
 	"drop_pagecache",
 	"drop_slab",
 	"oom_kill",
+	"fragment_stall",
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA_BALANCING
 	"numa_pte_updates",
-- 
2.16.4


^ permalink raw reply related	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [PATCH 1/5] mm, page_alloc: Spread allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 1/5] mm, page_alloc: Spread allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation Mel Gorman
@ 2018-11-26 12:36   ` Vlastimil Babka
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Vlastimil Babka @ 2018-11-26 12:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Mel Gorman, Andrew Morton
  Cc: David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan, Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM

On 11/23/18 12:45 PM, Mel Gorman wrote:
...


> Fault latencies are slightly reduced while allocation success rates remain
> at zero as this configuration does not make any special effort to allocate
> THP and fio is heavily active at the time and either filling memory or
> keeping pages resident. However, a 49% reduction of serious fragmentation
> events reduces the changes of external fragmentation being a problem in
> the future.
> 
> Vlastimil asked during review for a breakdown of the allocation types
> that are falling back.
> 
> vanilla
>    3816 MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE
>  800845 MIGRATE_MOVABLE
>      33 MIGRATE_UNRECLAIMABLE
> 
> patch
>     735 MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE
>  408135 MIGRATE_MOVABLE
>      42 MIGRATE_UNRECLAIMABLE

Nit: it's MIGRATE_RECLAIMABLE :)

> The majority of the fallbacks are due to movable allocations and this is
> consistent for the workload throughout the series so will not be presented
> again as the primary source of fallbacks are movable allocations.

Note that I was more interested in the *reduction* of different kinds of
fallbacks, not their ratios - that the majority is caused by movable
allocations is fully expected.
And the results above actually show that while the reduction for MOVABLE
is ~50%, the reduction for UNMOVABLE is actually 80%! IMHO that's great
(better than I would expect, in fact), and good to know.

...

> Overall, the patch reduces the number of external fragmentation causing
> events so the success of THP over long periods of time would be improved
> for this adverse workload.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>

Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [PATCH 3/5] mm: Use alloc_flags to record if kswapd can wake
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 3/5] mm: Use alloc_flags to record if kswapd can wake Mel Gorman
@ 2018-11-26 13:38   ` Vlastimil Babka
  2018-11-26 14:35     ` [PATCH] mm: Use alloc_flags to record if kswapd can wake -fix Mel Gorman
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Vlastimil Babka @ 2018-11-26 13:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Mel Gorman, Andrew Morton
  Cc: David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan, Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM

On 11/23/18 12:45 PM, Mel Gorman wrote:
> This is a preparation patch that copies the GFP flag __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM
> into alloc_flags. This is a preparation patch only that avoids having to
> pass gfp_mask through a long callchain in a future patch.
> 
> Note that the setting in the fast path happens in alloc_flags_nofragment()
> and it may be claimed that this has nothing to do with ALLOC_NO_FRAGMENT.
> That's true in this patch but is not true later so it's done now for
> easier review to show where the flag needs to be recorded.
> 
> No functional change.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>

Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>

Small bug below:

> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -3278,10 +3278,15 @@ static bool zone_allows_reclaim(struct zone *local_zone, struct zone *zone)
>   * fragmentation between the Normal and DMA32 zones.
>   */
>  static inline unsigned int
> -alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone)
> +alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask)
>  {
> +	unsigned int alloc_flags = 0;
> +
> +	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM)
> +		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_KSWAPD;
> +
>  	if (zone_idx(zone) != ZONE_NORMAL)
> -		return 0;
> +		goto out;
>  
>  	/*
>  	 * If ZONE_DMA32 exists, assume it is the one after ZONE_NORMAL and
> @@ -3290,13 +3295,14 @@ alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone)
>  	 */
>  	BUILD_BUG_ON(ZONE_NORMAL - ZONE_DMA32 != 1);
>  	if (nr_online_nodes > 1 && !populated_zone(--zone))
> -		return 0;
> +		goto out;
>  
> -	return ALLOC_NOFRAGMENT;
> +out:
> +	return alloc_flags;
>  }
>  #else
>  static inline unsigned int
> -alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone)
> +alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask)
>  {
>  	return 0;

The !CONFIG_ZONE_DMA32 version should still set ALLOC_KSWAPD, right?

>  }
> @@ -3939,6 +3945,9 @@ gfp_to_alloc_flags(gfp_t gfp_mask)
>  	} else if (unlikely(rt_task(current)) && !in_interrupt())
>  		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_HARDER;
>  
> +	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM)
> +		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_KSWAPD;
> +
>  #ifdef CONFIG_CMA
>  	if (gfpflags_to_migratetype(gfp_mask) == MIGRATE_MOVABLE)
>  		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_CMA;

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* [PATCH] mm: Use alloc_flags to record if kswapd can wake -fix
  2018-11-26 13:38   ` Vlastimil Babka
@ 2018-11-26 14:35     ` Mel Gorman
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mel Gorman @ 2018-11-26 14:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Morton
  Cc: Vlastimil Babka, David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan,
	Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM

Vlastimil Babka correctly pointed out that the ALLOC_KSWAPD flag needs to be
applied in the !CONFIG_ZONE_DMA32 case. This is a fix for the mmotm path
mm-use-alloc_flags-to-record-if-kswapd-can-wake.patch

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
---
 mm/page_alloc.c | 10 ++--------
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index e44eb68744ed..a48ebb821360 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -3268,7 +3268,6 @@ static bool zone_allows_reclaim(struct zone *local_zone, struct zone *zone)
 }
 #endif	/* CONFIG_NUMA */
 
-#ifdef CONFIG_ZONE_DMA32
 /*
  * The restriction on ZONE_DMA32 as being a suitable zone to use to avoid
  * fragmentation is subtle. If the preferred zone was HIGHMEM then
@@ -3285,6 +3284,7 @@ alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask)
 	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM)
 		alloc_flags |= ALLOC_KSWAPD;
 
+#ifdef CONFIG_ZONE_DMA32
 	if (zone_idx(zone) != ZONE_NORMAL)
 		goto out;
 
@@ -3298,15 +3298,9 @@ alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask)
 		goto out;
 
 out:
+#endif /* CONFIG_ZONE_DMA32 */
 	return alloc_flags;
 }
-#else
-static inline unsigned int
-alloc_flags_nofragment(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask)
-{
-	return 0;
-}
-#endif
 
 /*
  * get_page_from_freelist goes through the zonelist trying to allocate

^ permalink raw reply related	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [PATCH 4/5] mm: Reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 4/5] mm: Reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs Mel Gorman
@ 2018-11-27  9:23   ` Vlastimil Babka
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Vlastimil Babka @ 2018-11-27  9:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Mel Gorman, Andrew Morton
  Cc: David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan, Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM

On 11/23/18 12:45 PM, Mel Gorman wrote:
> An external fragmentation event was previously described as
> 
>     When the page allocator fragments memory, it records the event using
>     the mm_page_alloc_extfrag event. If the fallback_order is smaller
>     than a pageblock order (order-9 on 64-bit x86) then it's considered
>     an event that will cause external fragmentation issues in the future.
> 
> The kernel reduces the probability of such events by increasing the
> watermark sizes by calling set_recommended_min_free_kbytes early in the
> lifetime of the system. This works reasonably well in general but if there
> are enough sparsely populated pageblocks then the problem can still occur
> as enough memory is free overall and kswapd stays asleep.
> 
> This patch introduces a watermark_boost_factor sysctl that allows a zone
> watermark to be temporarily boosted when an external fragmentation causing
> events occurs. The boosting will stall allocations that would decrease
> free memory below the boosted low watermark and kswapd is woken if the
> calling context allows to reclaim an amount of memory relative to the
> size of the high watermark and the watermark_boost_factor until the boost
> is cleared. When kswapd finishes, it wakes kcompactd at the pageblock
> order to clean some of the pageblocks that may have been affected by
> the fragmentation event. kswapd avoids any writeback, slab shrinkage and
> swap from reclaim context during this operation to avoid excessive system
> disruption in the name of fragmentation avoidance. Care is taken so that
> kswapd will do normal reclaim work if the system is really low on memory.
> 
> This was evaluated using the same workloads as "mm, page_alloc: Spread
> allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation".
> 
> 1-socket Skylake machine
> config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
> 4 fio threads, 1 THP allocating thread
> --------------------------------------
> 
> 4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:   804694
> 4.20-rc3+patch:                      408912 (49% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                    18421 (98% reduction)
> 
>                                    4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                                  lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
> Amean     fault-base-1      653.58 (   0.00%)      652.71 (   0.13%)
> Amean     fault-huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)      178.93 * -99.00%*
> 
>                               4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                             lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
> Percentage huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)        5.12 ( 100.00%)
> 
> Note that external fragmentation causing events are massively reduced
> by this path whether in comparison to the previous kernel or the vanilla
> kernel. The fault latency for huge pages appears to be increased but that
> is only because THP allocations were successful with the patch applied.
> 
> 1-socket Skylake machine
> global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  291392
> 4.20-rc3+patch:                     191187 (34% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   13464 (95% reduction)
> 
> thpfioscale Fault Latencies
>                                    4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                                  lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
> Min       fault-base-1      912.00 (   0.00%)      905.00 (   0.77%)
> Min       fault-huge-1      127.00 (   0.00%)      135.00 (  -6.30%)
> Amean     fault-base-1     1467.55 (   0.00%)     1481.67 (  -0.96%)
> Amean     fault-huge-1     1127.11 (   0.00%)     1063.88 *   5.61%*
> 
>                               4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                             lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
> Percentage huge-1       77.64 (   0.00%)       83.46 (   7.49%)
> 
> As before, massive reduction in external fragmentation events, some jitter
> on latencies and an increase in THP allocation success rates.
> 
> 2-socket Haswell machine
> config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
> 4 fio threads, 5 THP allocating threads
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  215698
> 4.20-rc3+patch:                     200210 (7% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   14263 (93% reduction)
> 
>                                    4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                                  lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
> Amean     fault-base-5     1346.45 (   0.00%)     1306.87 (   2.94%)
> Amean     fault-huge-5     3418.60 (   0.00%)     1348.94 (  60.54%)
> 
>                               4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                             lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
> Percentage huge-5        0.78 (   0.00%)        7.91 ( 910.64%)
> 
> There is a 93% reduction in fragmentation causing events, there
> is a big reduction in the huge page fault latency and allocation
> success rate is higher.
> 
> 2-socket Haswell machine
> global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9: 166352
> 4.20-rc3+patch:                    147463 (11% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                  11095 (93% reduction)
> 
> thpfioscale Fault Latencies
>                                    4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                                  lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
> Amean     fault-base-5     6217.43 (   0.00%)     7419.67 * -19.34%*
> Amean     fault-huge-5     3163.33 (   0.00%)     3263.80 (  -3.18%)
> 
>                               4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                             lowzone-v5r8             boost-v5r8
> Percentage huge-5       95.14 (   0.00%)       87.98 (  -7.53%)
> 
> There is a large reduction in fragmentation events with some jitter around
> the latencies and success rates. As before, the high THP allocation
> success rate does mean the system is under a lot of pressure. However,
> as the fragmentation events are reduced, it would be expected that the
> long-term allocation success rate would be higher.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>

Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [PATCH 5/5] mm: Stall movable allocations until kswapd progresses during serious external fragmentation event
  2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 5/5] mm: Stall movable allocations until kswapd progresses during serious external fragmentation event Mel Gorman
@ 2018-11-27 13:20   ` Vlastimil Babka
  2018-11-27 17:51     ` Mel Gorman
  2018-12-05  8:06     ` Mel Gorman
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Vlastimil Babka @ 2018-11-27 13:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Mel Gorman, Andrew Morton
  Cc: David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan, Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM

On 11/23/18 12:45 PM, Mel Gorman wrote:
> An event that potentially causes external fragmentation problems has
> already been described but there are degrees of severity.  A "serious"
> event is defined as one that steals a contiguous range of pages of an order
> lower than fragment_stall_order (PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER by default). If a
> movable allocation request that is allowed to sleep needs to steal a small
> block then it schedules until kswapd makes progress or a timeout passes.
> The watermarks are also boosted slightly faster so that kswapd makes
> greater effort to reclaim enough pages to avoid the fragmentation event.
> 
> This stall is not guaranteed to avoid serious fragmentation events.
> If memory pressure is high enough, the pages freed by kswapd may be
> reallocated or the free pages may not be in pageblocks that contain
> only movable pages. Furthermore an allocation request that cannot stall
> (e.g. atomic allocations) or unmovable/reclaimable allocations will still
> proceed without stalling. The reason is that movable allocations can be
> migrated and stalling for kswapd to make progress means that compaction
> has targets. Unmovable/reclaimable allocations on the other hand do not
> benefit from stalling as their pages cannot move.
> 
> The worst-case scenario for stalling is a combination of both high memory
> pressure where kswapd is having trouble keeping free pages over the
> pfmemalloc_reserve and movable allocations are fragmenting memory. In this
> case, an allocation request may sleep for longer. There are both vmstats
> to identify stalls are happening and a tracepoint to quantify what the
> stall durations are. Note that the granularity of the stall detection is
> a jiffy so the delay accounting is not precise.
> 
> 1-socket Skylake machine
> config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
> 4 fio threads, 1 THP allocating thread
> --------------------------------------
> 
> 4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:   804694
> 4.20-rc3+patch:                      408912 (49% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                    18421 (98% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-5:                    16788 (98% reduction)
> 
>                                    4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                                    boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
> Amean     fault-base-1      652.71 (   0.00%)      651.40 (   0.20%)
> Amean     fault-huge-1      178.93 (   0.00%)      174.49 *   2.48%*
> 
> thpfioscale Percentage Faults Huge
>                               4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                               boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
> Percentage huge-1        5.12 (   0.00%)        5.56 (   8.77%)
> 
> Fragmentation events are further reduced. Note that in previous versions,
> it was reduced to negligible levels but the logic has been corrected
> to avoid exceessive reclaim and slab shrinkage in the meantime to avoid
> IO regressions that may not be tolerable.
> 
> The latencies and allocation success rates are roughly similar.  Over the
> course of 16 minutes, there were 2 stalls due to fragmentation avoidance
> for 8 microseconds.
> 
> 1-socket Skylake machine
> global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  291392
> 4.20-rc3+patch:                     191187 (34% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   13464 (95% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-5:                   15089 (99.7% reduction)
> 
>                                    4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                                    boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
> Amean     fault-base-1     1481.67 (   0.00%)        0.00 * 100.00%*
> Amean     fault-huge-1     1063.88 (   0.00%)      540.81 *  49.17%*
> 
>                               4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                               boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
> Percentage huge-1       83.46 (   0.00%)      100.00 (  19.82%)
> 
> The fragmentation events were increased which is bad, but this is offset
> by the fact that THP allocation rates had a lower latency and a perfect
> allocation success rate. There were 102 stalls over the course of 16
> minutes for a total stall time of roughly 0.4 seconds.
> 
> 2-socket Haswell machine
> config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
> 4 fio threads, 5 THP allocating threads
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  215698
> 4.20-rc3+patch:                     200210 (7% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                   14263 (93% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-5:                   11702 (95% reduction)
> 
>                                    4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                                    boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
> Amean     fault-base-5     1306.87 (   0.00%)     1340.96 (  -2.61%)
> Amean     fault-huge-5     1348.94 (   0.00%)     2089.44 ( -54.89%)
> 
>                               4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                               boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
> Percentage huge-5        7.91 (   0.00%)        2.43 ( -69.26%)
> 
> There is a slight reduction in fragmentation events but it's slight
> enough that it may be due to luck. Unfortunately, both the latencies
> and success rates were lower. However, this is highly likely to be due
> to luck given that there were just 12 stalls for 76 microseconds. Direct
> reclaim was also eliminated but that is likely a co-incidence.
> 
> 2-socket Haswell machine
> global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9: 166352
> 4.20-rc3+patch:                    147463 (11% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-4:                  11095 (93% reduction)
> 4.20-rc3+patch1-5:                  10677 (94% reduction)
> 
> thpfioscale Fault Latencies
>                                    4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                                    boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
> Amean     fault-base-5     7419.67 (   0.00%)     6853.97 (   7.62%)
> Amean     fault-huge-5     3263.80 (   0.00%)     1799.26 *  44.87%*
> 
>                               4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
>                               boost-v5r8             stall-v5r8
> Percentage huge-5       87.98 (   0.00%)       98.97 (  12.49%)
> 
> The fragmentation events are slightly reduced with the latencies and
> allocation success rates much improved.  There were 462 stalls over the
> course of 68 minutes with a total stall time of roughly 1.9 seconds.
> 
> This patch has a marginal rate on fragmentation rates as it's rare for
> the stall logic to actually trigger but the small stalls can be enough for
> kswapd to catch up. How much that helps is variable but probably worthwhile
> for long-term allocation success rates. It is possible to eliminate
> fragmentation events entirely with tuning due to this patch although that
> would require careful evaluation to determine if it's worthwhile.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>

The gains here are relatively smaller and noisier than for the previous
patches. Also I'm afraid that once antifrag loses against the ultimate
adversary workload (see the "Caching/buffers become useless after some
time" thread), then this might result in adding stalls to a workload
that has no other options but to allocate movable pages from partially
filled unmovable blocks, because that's simply the majority of
pageblocks in the system, and the stalls can't help the situation. If
that proves to be true, we could revert, but then there's the new
user-visible tunable... and that all makes it harder for me to decide
about this patch :) If only we could find out early while this is in
linux-mm/linux-next...


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [PATCH 5/5] mm: Stall movable allocations until kswapd progresses during serious external fragmentation event
  2018-11-27 13:20   ` Vlastimil Babka
@ 2018-11-27 17:51     ` Mel Gorman
  2018-12-05  8:06     ` Mel Gorman
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mel Gorman @ 2018-11-27 17:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Vlastimil Babka
  Cc: Andrew Morton, David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan,
	Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 02:20:30PM +0100, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> > This patch has a marginal rate on fragmentation rates as it's rare for
> > the stall logic to actually trigger but the small stalls can be enough for
> > kswapd to catch up. How much that helps is variable but probably worthwhile
> > for long-term allocation success rates. It is possible to eliminate
> > fragmentation events entirely with tuning due to this patch although that
> > would require careful evaluation to determine if it's worthwhile.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
> 
> The gains here are relatively smaller and noisier than for the previous
> patches.

Indeed, in an earlier illogical version then it had a bigger impact but
that was due to buggy side-effects.

> Also I'm afraid that once antifrag loses against the ultimate
> adversary workload (see the "Caching/buffers become useless after some
> time" thread), then this might result in adding stalls to a workload
> that has no other options but to allocate movable pages from partially
> filled unmovable blocks, because that's simply the majority of
> pageblocks in the system, and the stalls can't help the situation. If
> that proves to be true, we could revert, but then there's the new
> user-visible tunable... and that all makes it harder for me to decide
> about this patch :) If only we could find out early while this is in
> linux-mm/linux-next...
> 

I think in the event it has to revert that it would be ok for the tuning
to disappear at the same time. There are occasions where a particular
tuning has side-effects that make it harder to remove the interface but
in this case, the tuning is directly related to the patch itself.

That said, stalling behaviour has been problematic so if we want to play
it safe then I do not mind this patch being dropped until there is a
definite benefit from it as the bulk of the series benefit is from the
first 4 patches.

-- 
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [PATCH 5/5] mm: Stall movable allocations until kswapd progresses during serious external fragmentation event
  2018-11-27 13:20   ` Vlastimil Babka
  2018-11-27 17:51     ` Mel Gorman
@ 2018-12-05  8:06     ` Mel Gorman
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mel Gorman @ 2018-12-05  8:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Morton
  Cc: Vlastimil Babka, David Rientjes, Andrea Arcangeli, Zi Yan,
	Michal Hocko, LKML, Linux-MM

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 02:20:30PM +0100, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> > This patch has a marginal rate on fragmentation rates as it's rare for
> > the stall logic to actually trigger but the small stalls can be enough for
> > kswapd to catch up. How much that helps is variable but probably worthwhile
> > for long-term allocation success rates. It is possible to eliminate
> > fragmentation events entirely with tuning due to this patch although that
> > would require careful evaluation to determine if it's worthwhile.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
> 
> The gains here are relatively smaller and noisier than for the previous
> patches. Also I'm afraid that once antifrag loses against the ultimate
> adversary workload (see the "Caching/buffers become useless after some
> time" thread), then this might result in adding stalls to a workload
> that has no other options but to allocate movable pages from partially
> filled unmovable blocks, because that's simply the majority of
> pageblocks in the system, and the stalls can't help the situation. If
> that proves to be true, we could revert, but then there's the new
> user-visible tunable... and that all makes it harder for me to decide
> about this patch :) If only we could find out early while this is in
> linux-mm/linux-next...
> 

Andrew, would you mind dropping this patch from mmotm please? I think
the benefit is marginal relative to the potential loss. If it turns out
we ever really do need it then hopefully there will be better data
supporting it.

Thanks.

-- 
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2018-12-05  8:06 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2018-11-23 11:45 [PATCH 0/5] Fragmentation avoidance improvements v5 Mel Gorman
2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 1/5] mm, page_alloc: Spread allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation Mel Gorman
2018-11-26 12:36   ` Vlastimil Babka
2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 2/5] mm: Move zone watermark accesses behind an accessor Mel Gorman
2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 3/5] mm: Use alloc_flags to record if kswapd can wake Mel Gorman
2018-11-26 13:38   ` Vlastimil Babka
2018-11-26 14:35     ` [PATCH] mm: Use alloc_flags to record if kswapd can wake -fix Mel Gorman
2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 4/5] mm: Reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs Mel Gorman
2018-11-27  9:23   ` Vlastimil Babka
2018-11-23 11:45 ` [PATCH 5/5] mm: Stall movable allocations until kswapd progresses during serious external fragmentation event Mel Gorman
2018-11-27 13:20   ` Vlastimil Babka
2018-11-27 17:51     ` Mel Gorman
2018-12-05  8:06     ` Mel Gorman

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