linux-mm.kvack.org archive mirror
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Zlatko Calusic <zlatko.calusic@iskon.hr>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>, linux-mm <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: do not sleep in balance_pgdat if there's no i/o congestion
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2012 12:58:02 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20121220125802.23e9b22d.akpm@linux-foundation.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20121220111208.GD10819@suse.de>

On Thu, 20 Dec 2012 11:12:08 +0000
Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 12:17:07AM +0100, Zlatko Calusic wrote:
> > On a 4GB RAM machine, where Normal zone is much smaller than
> > DMA32 zone, the Normal zone gets fragmented in time. This requires
> > relatively more pressure in balance_pgdat to get the zone above the
> > required watermark. Unfortunately, the congestion_wait() call in there
> > slows it down for a completely wrong reason, expecting that there's
> > a lot of writeback/swapout, even when there's none (much more common).
> > After a few days, when fragmentation progresses, this flawed logic
> > translates to a very high CPU iowait times, even though there's no
> > I/O congestion at all. If THP is enabled, the problem occurs sooner,
> > but I was able to see it even on !THP kernels, just by giving it a bit
> > more time to occur.
> > 
> > The proper way to deal with this is to not wait, unless there's
> > congestion. Thanks to Mel Gorman, we already have the function that
> > perfectly fits the job. The patch was tested on a machine which
> > nicely revealed the problem after only 1 day of uptime, and it's been
> > working great.
> > ---
> >  mm/vmscan.c |   12 ++++++------
> >  1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
> > 
> 
> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de

There seems to be some complexity/duplication here between the new
unbalanced_zone() and pgdat_balanced().

Can we modify pgdat_balanced() so that it also handles order=0, then do

-		if (!unbalanced_zone || (order && pgdat_balanced(pgdat, balanced, *classzone_idx)))
+		if (!pgdat_balanced(...))

?

--
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: <a href=mailto:"dont@kvack.org"> email@kvack.org </a>

  reply	other threads:[~2012-12-20 20:58 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2012-12-19 23:17 [PATCH] mm: do not sleep in balance_pgdat if there's no i/o congestion Zlatko Calusic
2012-12-19 23:25 ` Zlatko Calusic
2012-12-21 11:51   ` Hillf Danton
2012-12-27 15:42     ` Zlatko Calusic
2012-12-29  7:25       ` Hillf Danton
2012-12-29 12:11         ` Zlatko Calusic
2012-12-20 11:12 ` Mel Gorman
2012-12-20 20:58   ` Andrew Morton [this message]
2012-12-22 18:54     ` [PATCH] mm: modify pgdat_balanced() so that it also handles order=0 Zlatko Calusic
2012-12-23 14:12       ` [PATCH v2] " Zlatko Calusic
2012-12-26 15:07         ` [PATCH] mm: avoid calling pgdat_balanced() needlessly Zlatko Calusic
2012-12-28  2:16           ` [PATCH] mm: fix null pointer dereference in wait_iff_congested() Zlatko Calusic
2012-12-28  2:49             ` Minchan Kim
2012-12-28 13:29               ` Zlatko Calusic
2012-12-31  0:50                 ` Minchan Kim
2012-12-29  8:45             ` Sedat Dilek

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20121220125802.23e9b22d.akpm@linux-foundation.org \
    --to=akpm@linux-foundation.org \
    --cc=hughd@google.com \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=linux-mm@kvack.org \
    --cc=mgorman@suse.de \
    --cc=torvalds@linux-foundation.org \
    --cc=zlatko.calusic@iskon.hr \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).