Re: [Question] Should direct reclaim time be bounded?

[Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>]

On 7/11/19 10:47 PM, Hillf Danton wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 02:42:56 +0800 Mike Kravetz wrote:
>>
>> It is quite easy to hit the condition where:
>> nr_reclaimed == 0  && nr_scanned == 0 is true, but we skip the previous test
>>
> Then skipping check of __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL makes no sense in your case.
> It is restored in respin below.
> 
>> and the compaction check:
>> sc->nr_reclaimed < pages_for_compaction &&
>> 	inactive_lru_pages > pages_for_compaction
>> is true, so we return true before the below check of costly_fg_reclaim
>>
> This check is placed after COMPACT_SUCCESS; the latter is used to
> replace sc->nr_reclaimed < pages_for_compaction.
> 
> And dryrun detection is added based on the result of last round of
> shrinking of inactive pages, particularly when their number is large
> enough.
> 

Thanks Hillf.

This change does appear to eliminate the issue with stalls by
should_continue_reclaim returning true too often.  I need to think
some more about exactly what is impacted with the change.

With this change, the problem moves to compaction with should_compact_retry
returning true too often.  It is the same behavior seem when I simply removed
the __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL special casing in should_continue_reclaim.

At Mel's suggestion I removed the compaction_zonelist_suitable() call
from should_compact_retry.  This eliminated the compaction stalls.  Thanks
Mel.

With both changes, stalls appear to be eliminated.  This is promising.
I'll try to refine these approaches and continue testing.
-- 
Mike Kravetz

> --- a/mm/vmscan.c
> +++ b/mm/vmscan.c
> @@ -2571,18 +2571,6 @@ static inline bool should_continue_reclaim(struct pglist_data *pgdat,
>  			return false;
>  	}
> 
> -	/*
> -	 * If we have not reclaimed enough pages for compaction and the
> -	 * inactive lists are large enough, continue reclaiming
> -	 */
> -	pages_for_compaction = compact_gap(sc->order);
> -	inactive_lru_pages = node_page_state(pgdat, NR_INACTIVE_FILE);
> -	if (get_nr_swap_pages() > 0)
> -		inactive_lru_pages += node_page_state(pgdat, NR_INACTIVE_ANON);
> -	if (sc->nr_reclaimed < pages_for_compaction &&
> -			inactive_lru_pages > pages_for_compaction)
> -		return true;
> -
>  	/* If compaction would go ahead or the allocation would succeed, stop */
>  	for (z = 0; z <= sc->reclaim_idx; z++) {
>  		struct zone *zone = &pgdat->node_zones[z];
> @@ -2598,7 +2586,21 @@ static inline bool should_continue_reclaim(struct pglist_data *pgdat,
>  			;
>  		}
>  	}
> -	return true;
> +
> +	/*
> +	 * If we have not reclaimed enough pages for compaction and the
> +	 * inactive lists are large enough, continue reclaiming
> +	 */
> +	pages_for_compaction = compact_gap(sc->order);
> +	inactive_lru_pages = node_page_state(pgdat, NR_INACTIVE_FILE);
> +	if (get_nr_swap_pages() > 0)
> +		inactive_lru_pages += node_page_state(pgdat, NR_INACTIVE_ANON);
> +
> +	return inactive_lru_pages > pages_for_compaction &&
> +		/*
> +		 * avoid dryrun with plenty of inactive pages
> +		 */
> +		nr_scanned && nr_reclaimed;
>  }
> 
>  static bool pgdat_memcg_congested(pg_data_t *pgdat, struct mem_cgroup *memcg)
> --
>