Re: [patch] mm: memcg: do not declare OOM from __GFP_NOFAIL allocations

Johannes Weiner
2013-12-04T03:01:01Z

On Tue, Dec 03, 2013 at 03:40:13PM -0800, David Rientjes wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Dec 2013, Johannes Weiner wrote:
>
> > > > Spin on which level? The whole point of this change was to not spin for
> > > > ever because the caller might sit on top of other locks which might
> > > > prevent somebody else to die although it has been killed.
> > >
> > > See my question about the non-memcg page allocator behavior below.
> >
> > No, please answer the question.
> >
>
> The question would be answered below, by having consistency in allocation
> and charging paths between both the page allocator and memcg.
>
> > > I'm not quite sure how significant of a point this is, though, because it
> > > depends on the caller doing the __GFP_NOFAIL allocations that allow the
> > > bypass. If you're doing
> > >
> > > for (i = 0; i < 1 << 20; i++)
> > > page[i] = alloc_page(GFP_NOFS | __GFP_NOFAIL);
> >
> > Hyperbole serves no one.
> >
>
> Since this bypasses all charges to the root memcg in oom conditions as a
> result of your patch, how do you ensure the "leakage" is contained to a
> small amount of memory? Are we currently just trusting the users of
> __GFP_NOFAIL that they aren't allocating a large amount of memory?

Yes, as answered in my first reply to you:

---

> Ah, this is because of 3168ecbe1c04 ("mm: memcg: use proper memcg in limit
> bypass") which just bypasses all of these allocations and charges the root
> memcg. So if allocations want to bypass memcg isolation they just have to
> be __GFP_NOFAIL?

I don't think we have another option.

---

Is there a specific reason you keep repeating the same questions?

> > > I'm referring to the generic non-memcg page allocator behavior. Forget
> > > memcg for a moment. What is the behavior in the _page_allocator_ for
> > > GFP_NOFS | __GFP_NOFAIL? Do we spin forever if reclaim fails or do we
> > > bypas the per-zone min watermarks to allow it to allocate because "it
> > > needs to succeed, it may be holding filesystem locks"?
> > >
> > > It's already been acknowledged in this thread that no bypassing is done
> > > in the page allocator and it just spins. There's some handwaving saying
> > > that since the entire system is oom that there is a greater chance that
> > > memory will be freed by something else, but that's just handwaving and is
> > > certainly no guaranteed.
> >
> > Do you have another explanation of why this deadlock is not triggering
> > in the global case? It's pretty obvious that there is a deadlock that
> > can not be resolved unless some unrelated task intervenes, just read
> > __alloc_pages_slowpath().
> >
> > But we had a concrete bug report for memcg where there was no other
> > task to intervene. One was stuck in the OOM killer waiting for the
> > victim to exit, the victim was stuck on locks that the killer held.
> >
>
> I believe the page allocator would be susceptible to the same deadlock if
> nothing else on the system can reclaim memory and that belief comes from
> code inspection that shows __GFP_NOFAIL is not guaranteed to ever succeed
> in the page allocator as their charges now are (with your patch) in memcg.
> I do not have an example of such an incident.

Me neither.

> > > So, my question again: why not bypass the per-zone min watermarks in the
> > > page allocator?
> >
> > I don't even know what your argument is supposed to be. The fact that
> > we don't do it in the page allocator means that there can't be a bug
> > in memcg?
> >
>
> I'm asking if we should allow GFP_NOFS | __GFP_NOFAIL allocations in the
> page allocator to bypass per-zone min watermarks after reclaim has failed
> since the oom killer cannot be called in such a context so that the page
> allocator is not susceptible to the same deadlock without a complete
> depletion of memory reserves?

Yes, I think so.

> It's not an argument, it's a question. Relax.

Right.