Re: [PATCH v2 06/23] mm: introduce BPF struct ops for OOM handling

Michal Hocko
2025-10-31T09:02:23Z

On Mon 27-10-25 16:17:09, Roman Gushchin wrote:
> Introduce a bpf struct ops for implementing custom OOM handling
> policies.
>
> It's possible to load one bpf_oom_ops for the system and one
> bpf_oom_ops for every memory cgroup. In case of a memcg OOM, the
> cgroup tree is traversed from the OOM'ing memcg up to the root and
> corresponding BPF OOM handlers are executed until some memory is
> freed. If no memory is freed, the kernel OOM killer is invoked.

Do you have any usecase in mind where parent memcg oom handler decides
to not kill or cannot kill anything and hand over upwards in the
hierarchy?

> The struct ops provides the bpf_handle_out_of_memory() callback,
> which expected to return 1 if it was able to free some memory and 0
> otherwise. If 1 is returned, the kernel also checks the bpf_memory_freed
> field of the oom_control structure, which is expected to be set by
> kfuncs suitable for releasing memory. If both are set, OOM is
> considered handled, otherwise the next OOM handler in the chain
> (e.g. BPF OOM attached to the parent cgroup or the in-kernel OOM
> killer) is executed.

Could you explain why do we need both? Why is not bpf_memory_freed
return value sufficient?

> The bpf_handle_out_of_memory() callback program is sleepable to enable
> using iterators, e.g. cgroup iterators. The callback receives struct
> oom_control as an argument, so it can determine the scope of the OOM
> event: if this is a memcg-wide or system-wide OOM.

This could be tricky because it might introduce a subtle and hard to
debug lock dependency chain. lock(a); allocation() -> oom -> lock(a).
Sleepable locks should be only allowed in trylock mode.

> The callback is executed just before the kernel victim task selection
> algorithm, so all heuristics and sysctls like panic on oom,
> sysctl_oom_kill_allocating_task and sysctl_oom_kill_allocating_task
> are respected.

I guess you meant to say and sysctl_panic_on_oom.

> BPF OOM struct ops provides the handle_cgroup_offline() callback
> which is good for releasing struct ops if the corresponding cgroup
> is gone.

What kind of synchronization is expected between handle_cgroup_offline
and bpf_handle_out_of_memory?

> The struct ops also has the name field, which allows to define a
> custom name for the implemented policy. It's printed in the OOM report
> in the oom_policy=<policy> format. "default" is printed if bpf is not
> used or policy name is not specified.

oom_handler seems like a better fit but nothing I would insist on. Also
I would just print it if there is an actual handler so that existing
users who do not use bpf oom killers do not need to change their
parsers.

Other than that this looks reasonable to me.

--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs