Re: [PATCH 1/1] mm, oom_adj: don't loop through tasks in __set_oom_adj when not necessary

Christian Brauner
2020-08-20T13:35:37Z

On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 03:26:31PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Thu 20-08-20 07:54:44, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman) writes:
> >
> > 2> Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com> writes:
> > >
> > >> On Thu 20-08-20 07:34:41, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > >>> Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com> writes:
> > >>>
> > >>> > Currently __set_oom_adj loops through all processes in the system to
> > >>> > keep oom_score_adj and oom_score_adj_min in sync between processes
> > >>> > sharing their mm. This is done for any task with more that one mm_users,
> > >>> > which includes processes with multiple threads (sharing mm and signals).
> > >>> > However for such processes the loop is unnecessary because their signal
> > >>> > structure is shared as well.
> > >>> > Android updates oom_score_adj whenever a tasks changes its role
> > >>> > (background/foreground/...) or binds to/unbinds from a service, making
> > >>> > it more/less important. Such operation can happen frequently.
> > >>> > We noticed that updates to oom_score_adj became more expensive and after
> > >>> > further investigation found out that the patch mentioned in "Fixes"
> > >>> > introduced a regression. Using Pixel 4 with a typical Android workload,
> > >>> > write time to oom_score_adj increased from ~3.57us to ~362us. Moreover
> > >>> > this regression linearly depends on the number of multi-threaded
> > >>> > processes running on the system.
> > >>> > Mark the mm with a new MMF_PROC_SHARED flag bit when task is created with
> > >>> > CLONE_VM and !CLONE_SIGHAND. Change __set_oom_adj to use MMF_PROC_SHARED
> > >>> > instead of mm_users to decide whether oom_score_adj update should be
> > >>> > synchronized between multiple processes. To prevent races between clone()
> > >>> > and __set_oom_adj(), when oom_score_adj of the process being cloned might
> > >>> > be modified from userspace, we use oom_adj_mutex. Its scope is changed to
> > >>> > global and it is renamed into oom_adj_lock for naming consistency with
> > >>> > oom_lock. Since the combination of CLONE_VM and !CLONE_SIGHAND is rarely
> > >>> > used the additional mutex lock in that path of the clone() syscall should
> > >>> > not affect its overall performance. Clearing the MMF_PROC_SHARED flag
> > >>> > (when the last process sharing the mm exits) is left out of this patch to
> > >>> > keep it simple and because it is believed that this threading model is
> > >>> > rare. Should there ever be a need for optimizing that case as well, it
> > >>> > can be done by hooking into the exit path, likely following the
> > >>> > mm_update_next_owner pattern.
> > >>> > With the combination of CLONE_VM and !CLONE_SIGHAND being quite rare, the
> > >>> > regression is gone after the change is applied.
> > >>>
> > >>> So I am confused.
> > >>>
> > >>> Is there any reason why we don't simply move signal->oom_score_adj to
> > >>> mm->oom_score_adj and call it a day?
> > >>
> > >> Yes. Please read through 44a70adec910 ("mm, oom_adj: make sure processes
> > >> sharing mm have same view of oom_score_adj")
> > >
> > > That explains why the scores are synchronized.
> > >
> > > It doesn't explain why we don't do the much simpler thing and move
> > > oom_score_adj from signal_struct to mm_struct. Which is my question.
> > >
> > > Why not put the score where we need it to ensure that the oom score
> > > is always synchronized? AKA on the mm_struct, not the signal_struct.
> >
> > Apologies. That 44a70adec910 does describe that some people have seen
> > vfork users set oom_score. No details unfortunately.
> >
> > I will skip the part where posix calls this undefined behavior. It
> > breaks userspace to change.
> >
> > It still seems like the code should be able to buffer oom_adj during
> > vfork, and only move the value onto mm_struct during exec.
>
> If you can handle vfork by other means then I am all for it. There were
> no patches in that regard proposed yet. Maybe it will turn out simpler
> then the heavy lifting we have to do in the oom specific code.

Eric's not wrong. I fiddled with this too this morning but since
oom_score_adj is fiddled with in a bunch of places this seemed way more
code churn then what's proposed here.

Christian