From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail143.messagelabs.com (mail143.messagelabs.com [216.82.254.35]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DE95C6B004D for ; Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:39:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:38:54 -0700 From: Andrew Morton Subject: Re: [PATCH -mm] throttle direct reclaim when too many pages are isolated already Message-Id: <20090715203854.336de2d5.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <4A5E9E4E.5000308@redhat.com> References: <20090715223854.7548740a@bree.surriel.com> <20090715194820.237a4d77.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <4A5E9A33.3030704@redhat.com> <20090715202114.789d36f7.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <4A5E9E4E.5000308@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: Rik van Riel Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro , LKML , linux-mm , Wu Fengguang List-ID: On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:28:14 -0400 Rik van Riel wrote: > Andrew Morton wrote: > > On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:10:43 -0400 Rik van Riel wrote: > > > >> Andrew Morton wrote: > >>> On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:38:53 -0400 Rik van Riel wrote: > >>> > >>>> When way too many processes go into direct reclaim, it is possible > >>>> for all of the pages to be taken off the LRU. One result of this > >>>> is that the next process in the page reclaim code thinks there are > >>>> no reclaimable pages left and triggers an out of memory kill. > >>>> > >>>> One solution to this problem is to never let so many processes into > >>>> the page reclaim path that the entire LRU is emptied. Limiting the > >>>> system to only having half of each inactive list isolated for > >>>> reclaim should be safe. > >>>> > >>> Since when? Linux page reclaim has a bilion machine years testing and > >>> now stuff like this turns up. Did we break it or is this a > >>> never-before-discovered workload? > >> It's been there for years, in various forms. It hardly ever > >> shows up, but Kosaki's patch series give us a nice chance to > >> fix it for good. > > > > OK. > > > >>>> @@ -1049,6 +1070,10 @@ static unsigned long shrink_inactive_lis > >>>> struct zone_reclaim_stat *reclaim_stat = get_reclaim_stat(zone, sc); > >>>> int lumpy_reclaim = 0; > >>>> > >>>> + while (unlikely(too_many_isolated(zone, file))) { > >>>> + schedule_timeout_interruptible(HZ/10); > >>>> + } > >>> This (incorrectly-laid-out) code is a no-op if signal_pending(). > >> Good point, I should add some code to break out of page reclaim > >> if a fatal signal is pending, > > > > We can't just return NULL from __alloc_pages(), and if we can't > > get a page from the freelists then we're just going to have to keep > > reclaiming. So I'm not sure how we can do this. > > If we are stuck at this point in the page reclaim code, > it is because too many other tasks are reclaiming pages. > > That makes it fairly safe to just return SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX > here and hope that __alloc_pages() can get a page. > > After all, if __alloc_pages() thinks it made progress, > but still cannot make the allocation, it will call the > pageout code again. Which will immediately return because the caller still has fatal_signal_pending()? -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org