Re: strange allocation failures

Michal Hocko
2017-03-13T10:51:09Z

On Mon 13-03-17 11:37:41, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 11:31 AM, Andrey Ryabinin
> <aryabinin@virtuozzo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 03/13/2017 01:10 PM, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
> >> On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 11:08 AM, Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com> wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 11:04 AM, Andrey Ryabinin
> >>> <aryabinin@virtuozzo.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On 03/13/2017 12:50 PM, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
> >>>>> Hello Andrey, Kirill,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Can you please help me understand where is all my memory?
> >>>>> I am running very moderate workload on a machine with 7.5GB of memory
> >>>>> with KASAN. And I see constant vmalloc allocation failures for very
> >>>>> moderate sizes. I am confused why it happens and where is all my
> >>>>> memory...
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Perhaps it's SIGKILL generated by syzkaller?
> >>>>
> >>>> static void *__vmalloc_area_node()
> >>>> {
> >>>> .....
> >>>> if (fatal_signal_pending(current)) {
> >>>> area->nr_pages = i;
> >>>> goto fail;
> >>>> }
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Ah, that would make sense. Syzkaller can indeed kill processes frequently.
> >>>
> >>> Perhaps we should not print the lengthy allocation failure message
> >>> with all the details in such. Not sure how easy it is to filter out
> >>> such cases.
> >>> I have constant stream of these messages that just make everything
> >>> else lost between them. And they are quite confusing. I've starred at
> >>> the numbers trying to understand why I am short on memory.
> >>
> >>
> >> Seems trivial. What do you think of:
> >>
> >
> > Makes sense. ACK.
> >
> >> diff --git a/mm/vmalloc.c b/mm/vmalloc.c
> >> index 0dd80222b20b..0b057628a7ba 100644
> >> --- a/mm/vmalloc.c
> >> +++ b/mm/vmalloc.c
> >> @@ -1683,7 +1683,7 @@ static void *__vmalloc_area_node(struct
> >> vm_struct *area, gfp_t gfp_mask,
> >>
> >> if (fatal_signal_pending(current)) {
> >> area->nr_pages = i;
> >> - goto fail;
> >> + goto fail_no_warn;
> >> }
> >>
> >> if (node == NUMA_NO_NODE)
> >> @@ -1709,6 +1709,7 @@ static void *__vmalloc_area_node(struct
> >> vm_struct *area, gfp_t gfp_mask,
> >> warn_alloc(gfp_mask, NULL,
> >> "vmalloc: allocation failure, allocated %ld
> >> of %ld bytes",
> >> (area->nr_pages*PAGE_SIZE), area->size);
> >> +fail_no_warn:
> >> vfree(area->addr);
> >> return NULL;
> >> }
> >>
> >>
> >> ?
>
>
> These failing vmalloc's provoked a bunch of bugs in kernel on error
> handling paths. And it was useful to see that there was an allocation
> failure in the same process right before the bug.
> And it was unexpected that I am killing processes that frequently, so
> I would like to see at least some information about this on console.
> So now I have:

Allocation failure should tell us the state of the memory subsystem when
the allocation failed. This failure is due to external condition rather
than the MM subsystem failing so I agree that skipping the warning makes
some sense. The warning will be mostly uninteresting or worse confusing.
If you absolutely need some information then put pr_debug to the
failing path inside fatal_signal_pending branch.

> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index 6cbde310abed..418c80a76b4a 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -3073,6 +3073,11 @@ static inline bool should_suppress_show_mem(void)
> #if NODES_SHIFT > 8
> ret = in_interrupt();
> #endif
> + /*
> + * vmalloc() fails when fatal_signal_pending(),
> + * but that's not because we are out of memory.
> + */
> + ret |= fatal_signal_pending(current);
> return ret;
> }

This will basically silent all the warnings for OOM victims failing the
allocation. I do think we want that.