Re: [PATCH v6 0/5] zram/zsmalloc promotion

[Bob Liu <bob.liu@oracle.com>]

Hi Mel,

On 08/16/2013 01:12 AM, Mel Gorman wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 03:58:20AM +0900, Minchan Kim wrote:
>>> <SNIP>
>>>
>>> I do not believe this is a problem for zram as such because I do not
>>> think it ever writes back to disk and is immune from the unpredictable
>>> performance characteristics problem. The problem for zram using zsmalloc
>>> is OOM killing. If it's used for swap then there is no guarantee that
>>> killing processes frees memory and that could result in an OOM storm.
>>> Of course there is no guarantee that memory is freed with zbud either but
>>> you are guaranteed that freeing 50%+1 of the compressed pages will free a
>>> single physical page. The characteristics for zsmalloc are much more severe.
>>> This might be managable in an applicance with very careful control of the
>>> applications that are running but not for general servers or desktops.
>>
>> Fair enough but let's think of current usecase for zram.
>> As I said in description, most of user for zram are embedded products.
>> So, most of them has no swap storage and hate OOM kill because OOM is
>> already very very slow path so system slow response is really thing
>> we want to avoid. We prefer early process kill to slow response.
>> That's why custom low memory killer/notifier is popular in embedded side.
>> so actually, OOM storm problem shouldn't be a big problem under
>> well-control limited system. 
>>
> 
> Which zswap could also do if
> 
> a) it had a pseudo block device that failed all writes
> b) zsmalloc was pluggable
> 

I'll take a try soon!

> I recognise this sucks because zram is already in the field but if zram
> is promoted then zram and zswap will continue to diverge further with no
> reconcilation in sight.
> 
> Part of the point of using zswap was that potentially zcache could be
> implemented on top of it and so all file cache could be stored compressed
> in memory. AFAIK, it's not possible to do the same thing for zram because
> of the lack of writeback capabilities. Maybe it could be done if zram
> could be configured to write to an underlying storage device but it may
> be very clumsy to configure. I don't know as I never investigated it and
> to be honest, I'm struggling to remember how I got involved anywhere near
> zswap/zcache/zram/zwtf in the first place.
> 
>>> If it's used for something like tmpfs then it becomes much worse. Normal
>>> tmpfs without swap can lockup if tmpfs is allowed to fill memory. In a
>>> sane configuration, lockups will be avoided and deleting a tmpfs file is
>>> guaranteed to free memory. When zram is used to back tmpfs, there is no
>>> guarantee that any memory is freed due to fragmentation of the compressed
>>> pages. The only way to recover the memory may be to kill applications
>>> holding tmpfs files open and then delete them which is fairly drastic
>>> action in a normal server environment.
>>
>> Indeed.
>> Actually, I had a plan to support zsmalloc compaction. The zsmalloc exposes
>> handle instead of pure pointer so it could migrate some zpages to somewhere
>> to pack in. Then, it could help above problem and OOM storm problem.
>> Anyway, it's a totally new feature and requires many changes and experiement.
>> Although we don't have such feature, zram is still good for many people.
>>
> 
> And is zsmalloc was pluggable for zswap then it would also benefit.
> 
>>> These are the sort of reason why I feel that zram has limited cases where
>>> it is safe to use and zswap has a wider range of applications. At least
>>> I would be very unhappy to try supporting zram in the field for normal
>>> servers. zswap should be able to replace the functionality of zram+swap
>>> by backing zswap with a pseudo block device that rejects all writes. I
>>
>> One of difference between zswap and zram is asynchronous I/O support.
> 
> As zram is not writing to disk, how compelling is asynchronous IO? If
> zswap was backed by the pseudo device is there a measurable bottleneck?
> 
>> I guess frontswap is synchronous by semantic while zram could support
>> asynchronous I/O.
>>
>>> do not know why this never happened but guess the zswap people never were
>>> interested and the zram people never tried. Why was the pseudo device
>>> to avoid writebacks never implemented? Why was the underlying allocator
>>> not made pluggable to optionally use zsmalloc when the user did not care
>>> that it had terrible writeback characteristics?
>>
>> I remember you suggested to make zsmalloc with pluggable for zswap.
>> But I don't know why zswap people didn't implement it.
>>
>>>
>>> zswap cannot replicate zram+tmpfs but I also think that such a configuration
>>> is a bad idea anyway. As zram is already being deployed then it might get
>>
>> It seems your big concern of zsmalloc is fragmentaion so if zsmalloc can
>> support compaction, it would mitigate the concern.
>>
> 
> Even if it supported zsmalloc I would still wonder why zswap is not using
> it as a pluggable option :(
> 
>>> promoted anyway but personally I think compressed memory continues to be
>>
>> I admit zram might have limitations but it has helped lots of people.
>> It's not an imaginary scenario.
>>
> 
> I know.
> 
>> Please, let's not do get out of zram from kernel tree and stall it on staging
>> forever with preventing new features. 
>> Please, let's promote, expose it to more potential users, receive more
>> complains from them, recruit more contributors and let's enhance.
>>
> 
> As this is already used heavily in the field and I am not responsible
> for maintaining it I am not going to object to it being promoted. I can
> always push that it be disabled in distribution configs as it is not
> suitable for general workloads for reason already discussed.
> 
> However, I believe that the promotion will lead to zram and zswap diverging
> further from each other, both implementing similar functionality and
> ultimately cause greater maintenance headaches. There is a path that makes

Agree! I prefer this way too!

> zswap a functional replacement for zram and I've seen no good reason why
> that path was not taken. Zram cannot be a functional replacment for zswap
> as there is no obvious sane way writeback could be implemented. Continuing
> to diverge will ultimately bite someone in the ass.
> 

-- 
Regards,
-Bob

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