Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] mm: memcg: refactor page state unit helpers

[Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>]

On Wed, Oct 04, 2023 at 11:02:11AM +0200, Michal Koutný wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 03, 2023 at 12:47:25PM -0700, Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@google.com> wrote:
> > Those constants are shared with code outside of memcg, namely enum
> > node_stat_item and enum vm_event_item, and IIUC they are used
> > differently outside of memcg. Did I miss something?
> 
> The difference is not big, e.g.
>   mod_lruvec_state(lruvec, WORKINGSET_ACTIVATE_BASE + type, delta);
> could be
>   __count_memcg_events(
>     container_of(lruvec, struct mem_cgroup_per_node, lruvec)->memcg,
>     WORKINGSET_ACTIVATE_BASE + type, delta
>   );
> 
> Yes, it would mean transferring WORKINGSET_* items from enum
> node_stat_item to enum vm_event_item.
> IOW, I don't know what is the effective difference between
> mod_memcg_lruvec_state() and count_memcg_events().
> Is it per-memcg vs per-memcg-per-node resolution?

Yes, it's because of node resolution which event counters generally
don't have. Some of the refault events influence node-local reclaim
decisions, see mm/vmscan.c::snapshot_refaults().

There are a few other event counters in the stat array that people
thought would be useful to have split out in
/sys/devices/system/node/nodeN/vmstat to understand numa behavior
better.

It's a bit messy.

Some events would be useful to move to 'stats' for the numa awareness,
such as the allocator stats and reclaim activity.

Some events would be useful to move to 'stats' for the numa awareness,
but don't have the zone resolution required by them, such as
kswapd/kcompactd wakeups.

Some events aren't numa specific, such as oom kills, drop_pagecache.