Re: [RFC 0/4] mm: zswap: add support for zswapin of large folios

Usama Arif
2024-10-23T19:47:03Z

On 23/10/2024 19:52, Barry Song wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 24, 2024 at 7:31 AM Usama Arif <usamaarif642@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 23/10/2024 19:02, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
>>> [..]
>>>>>> I suspect the regression occurs because you're running an edge case
>>>>>> where the memory cgroup stays nearly full most of the time (this isn't
>>>>>> an inherent issue with large folio swap-in). As a result, swapping in
>>>>>> mTHP quickly triggers a memcg overflow, causing a swap-out. The
>>>>>> next swap-in then recreates the overflow, leading to a repeating
>>>>>> cycle.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, agreed! Looking at the swap counters, I think this is what is going
>>>>> on as well.
>>>>>
>>>>>> We need a way to stop the cup from repeatedly filling to the brim and
>>>>>> overflowing. While not a definitive fix, the following change might help
>>>>>> improve the situation:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> diff --git a/mm/memcontrol.c b/mm/memcontrol.c
>>>>>>
>>>>>> index 17af08367c68..f2fa0eeb2d9a 100644
>>>>>> --- a/mm/memcontrol.c
>>>>>> +++ b/mm/memcontrol.c
>>>>>>
>>>>>> @@ -4559,7 +4559,10 @@ int mem_cgroup_swapin_charge_folio(struct folio
>>>>>> *folio, struct mm_struct *mm,
>>>>>> memcg = get_mem_cgroup_from_mm(mm);
>>>>>> rcu_read_unlock();
>>>>>>
>>>>>> - ret = charge_memcg(folio, memcg, gfp);
>>>>>> + if (folio_test_large(folio) && mem_cgroup_margin(memcg) <
>>>>>> MEMCG_CHARGE_BATCH)
>>>>>> + ret = -ENOMEM;
>>>>>> + else
>>>>>> + ret = charge_memcg(folio, memcg, gfp);
>>>>>>
>>>>>> css_put(&memcg->css);
>>>>>> return ret;
>>>>>> }
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The diff makes sense to me. Let me test later today and get back to you.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks!
>>>>>
>>>>>> Please confirm if it makes the kernel build with memcg limitation
>>>>>> faster. If so, let's
>>>>>> work together to figure out an official patch :-) The above code hasn't consider
>>>>>> the parent memcg's overflow, so not an ideal fix.
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks Barry, I think this fixes the regression, and even gives an improvement!
>>>> I think the below might be better to do:
>>>>
>>>> diff --git a/mm/memcontrol.c b/mm/memcontrol.c
>>>> index c098fd7f5c5e..0a1ec55cc079 100644
>>>> --- a/mm/memcontrol.c
>>>> +++ b/mm/memcontrol.c
>>>> @@ -4550,7 +4550,11 @@ int mem_cgroup_swapin_charge_folio(struct folio *folio, struct mm_struct *mm,
>>>> memcg = get_mem_cgroup_from_mm(mm);
>>>> rcu_read_unlock();
>>>>
>>>> - ret = charge_memcg(folio, memcg, gfp);
>>>> + if (folio_test_large(folio) &&
>>>> + mem_cgroup_margin(memcg) < max(MEMCG_CHARGE_BATCH, folio_nr_pages(folio)))
>>>> + ret = -ENOMEM;
>>>> + else
>>>> + ret = charge_memcg(folio, memcg, gfp);
>>>>
>>>> css_put(&memcg->css);
>>>> return ret;
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> AMD 16K+32K THP=always
>>>> metric mm-unstable mm-unstable + large folio zswapin series mm-unstable + large folio zswapin + no swap thrashing fix
>>>> real 1m23.038s 1m23.050s 1m22.704s
>>>> user 53m57.210s 53m53.437s 53m52.577s
>>>> sys 7m24.592s 7m48.843s 7m22.519s
>>>> zswpin 612070 999244 815934
>>>> zswpout 2226403 2347979 2054980
>>>> pgfault 20667366 20481728 20478690
>>>> pgmajfault 385887 269117 309702
>>>>
>>>> AMD 16K+32K+64K THP=always
>>>> metric mm-unstable mm-unstable + large folio zswapin series mm-unstable + large folio zswapin + no swap thrashing fix
>>>> real 1m22.975s 1m23.266s 1m22.549s
>>>> user 53m51.302s 53m51.069s 53m46.471s
>>>> sys 7m40.168s 7m57.104s 7m25.012s
>>>> zswpin 676492 1258573 1225703
>>>> zswpout 2449839 2714767 2899178
>>>> pgfault 17540746 17296555 17234663
>>>> pgmajfault 429629 307495 287859
>>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks Usama and Barry for looking into this. It seems like this would
>>> fix a regression with large folio swapin regardless of zswap. Can the
>>> same result be reproduced on zram without this series?
>>
>>
>> Yes, its a regression in large folio swapin support regardless of zswap/zram.
>>
>> Need to do 3 tests, one with probably the below diff to remove large folio support,
>> one with current upstream and one with upstream + swap thrashing fix.
>>
>> We only use zswap and dont have a zram setup (and I am a bit lazy to create one :)).
>> Any zram volunteers to try this?
>
> Hi Usama,
>
> I tried a quick experiment:
>
> echo 1 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled
> echo 0 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled
>
> This was to test the zRAM scenario. Enabling zswap even
> once disables mTHP swap-in. :)
>
> I noticed a similar regression with zRAM alone, but the change resolved
> the issue and even sped up the kernel build compared to the setup without
> mTHP swap-in.

Thanks for trying, this is amazing!
>
> However, I’m still working on a proper patch to address this. The current
> approach:
>
> mem_cgroup_margin(memcg) < max(MEMCG_CHARGE_BATCH, folio_nr_pages(folio))
>
> isn’t sufficient, as it doesn’t cover cases where group A contains group B, and
> we’re operating within group B. The problem occurs not at the boundary of
> group B but at the boundary of group A.

I am not sure I completely followed this. As MEMCG_CHARGE_BATCH=64, if we are
trying to swapin a 16kB page, we basically check if atleast 64/4 = 16 folios can be
charged to cgroup, which is reasonable. If we try to swapin a 1M folio, we just
check if we can charge atleast 1 folio. Are you saying that checking just 1 folio
is not enough in this case and can still cause thrashing, i.e we should check more?

If we want to maintain consitency for all folios another option is
mem_cgroup_margin(memcg) < MEMCG_CHARGE_BATCH * folio_nr_pages(folio)
but I think this is too extreme, we would be checking if 64M can be charged to
cgroup just to swapin 1M.

>
> I believe there’s still room for improvement. For example, if a 64KB charge
> attempt fails, there’s no need to waste time trying 32KB or 16KB. We can
> directly fall back to 4KB, as 32KB and 16KB will also fail based on our
> margin detection logic.
>

Yes that makes sense. Would something like below work to fix that:

diff --git a/mm/memcontrol.c b/mm/memcontrol.c
index c098fd7f5c5e..0a1ec55cc079 100644
--- a/mm/memcontrol.c
+++ b/mm/memcontrol.c
@@ -4550,7 +4550,11 @@ int mem_cgroup_swapin_charge_folio(struct folio *folio, struct mm_struct *mm,
memcg = get_mem_cgroup_from_mm(mm);
rcu_read_unlock();

- ret = charge_memcg(folio, memcg, gfp);
+ if (folio_test_large(folio) &&
+ mem_cgroup_margin(memcg) < max(MEMCG_CHARGE_BATCH, folio_nr_pages(folio)))
+ ret = -ENOMEM;
+ else
+ ret = charge_memcg(folio, memcg, gfp);

css_put(&memcg->css);
return ret;
diff --git a/mm/memory.c b/mm/memory.c
index fecdd044bc0b..b6ce6605dc63 100644
--- a/mm/memory.c
+++ b/mm/memory.c
@@ -4123,6 +4123,7 @@ static struct folio *alloc_swap_folio(struct vm_fault *vmf)
pte_t *pte;
gfp_t gfp;
int order;
+ int ret;

/*
* If uffd is active for the vma we need per-page fault fidelity to
@@ -4170,9 +4171,13 @@ static struct folio *alloc_swap_folio(struct vm_fault *vmf)
addr = ALIGN_DOWN(vmf->address, PAGE_SIZE << order);
folio = vma_alloc_folio(gfp, order, vma, addr, true);
if (folio) {
- if (!mem_cgroup_swapin_charge_folio(folio, vma->vm_mm,
- gfp, entry))
+ ret = mem_cgroup_swapin_charge_folio(folio, vma->vm_mm, gfp, entry);
+ if (!ret) {
return folio;
+ } else if (ret == -ENOMEM) {
+ folio_put(folio);
+ goto fallback;
+ }
folio_put(folio);
}
order = next_order(&orders, order);