Re: [PATCH] mm: net: memcg accounting for TCP rx zerocopy

[Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 10:48 AM Roman Gushchin <guro@fb.com> wrote:
>
[snip]
> > > Does it mean that a page can be accounted twice (even temporarily)?
> > >
> >
> > This was an actual consideration for this patchset that we went back
> > and forth on a little bit.
> > Short answer, for this patch in its current form: yes. We're calling
> > mem_cgroup_charge_sock_pages() immediately prior to vm_insert_pages();
> > and the skb isn't cleaned up until afterwards. Thus we have a period
> > of double charging.
> >
> > The pseudocode for the approach in this patch is:
> >
> > while skb = next skb in queue is not null:
> >     charge_skb_pages(skb.pages) // sets page.memcg for each page
> >     // at this point pages are double counted
> >     vm_insert_pages(skb.pages)
> >     free(skb) // unrefs the pages, no longer double counted
> >
> > An alternative version of this patch went the other way: have a short
> > period of undercharging.
> >
> > while skb = next skb in queue is not null:
> >     for page in skb.pages set page.memcg
> >     vm_insert_pages(skb.pages)
> >     free(skb) // unrefs the pages. pages are now undercounted
> > charge_skb_pages(nr_pages_mapped, FORCE_CHARGE) // count is now correct again
> > ret
>
> I have to think more, but at the first look the second approach is better.
> IMO forcing the charge is less of a problem than double accounting
> (we're forcing sock memory charging anyway). I'm afraid that even if the
> double counting is temporarily for each individual page, with a constant
> traffic it will create a permanent difference.
>

The double accounting behavior is a bit different in cgroup v1 vs v2
world as skmem is accounted in memory for v2 and a separate tcp
counter for v1. I am fine with either approaches mentioned by Arjun
but I would prefer to not add complexity by doing one approach for v1
and the other for v2.