Re: [lockup] Re: objrmap-core-1 (rmap removal for file mappings to avoid 4:4 in <=16G machines)

[Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 12:49:24PM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> * Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> wrote:
> 
> > > or run the attached test-mmap2.c code, which simulates a very small DB
> > >  app using only 1800 vmas per process: it only maps 8 MB of shm and
> > >  spawns 32 processes. This has an even more lethal effect than the
> > >  previous code.
> > 
> > Do these tests actually make any forward progress at all, or is it some bug
> > which has sent the kernel into a loop?
> 
> i think they make a forward progress so it's more of a DoS - but a very
> effective one, especially considering that i didnt even try hard ...
> 
> what worries me is that there are apps that generate such vma patterns
> (for various reasons).

those vmas in those apps are forced to be mlocked with the rmap VM, so
it's hard for me to buy that rmap is any better. You can't even allow
those vmas to be non-mlocked or you'll finish your zone-normal even with
4:4.

on 64bit those apps will work _absolutely_best_ with objrmap and they'll
waste tons of ram (and some amount of cpu too) with rmap. objrmap is the
absolutely best model for those apps in any 64bit arch.

the argument you're making about those apps are all in favour of objrmap
IMO.

> I do believe that scanning ->i_mmap & ->i_mmap_shared is fundamentally
> flawed.

If it's the DoS that you worry about, vmtruncate will do the trick too.

overall machine remains usable for me, despite the increased cpu load.