Re: commit 0bf1457f0cfca7b " mm: vmscan: do not swap anon pages just because free+file is low" causes heavy performance regression on paging

Rafael Aquini
2014-04-22T18:58:34Z

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 11:06:56AM -0400, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> Hi Christian,
>
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 12:55:37PM +0200, Christian Borntraeger wrote:
> > While preparing/testing some KVM on s390 patches for the next merge window (target is kvm/next which is based on 3.15-rc1) I faced a very severe performance hickup on guest paging (all anonymous memory).
> >
> > All memory bound guests are in "D" state now and the system is barely unusable.
> >
> > Reverting commit 0bf1457f0cfca7bc026a82323ad34bcf58ad035d
> > "mm: vmscan: do not swap anon pages just because free+file is low" makes the problem go away.
> >
> > According to /proc/vmstat the system is now in direct reclaim almost all the time for every page fault (more than 10x more direct reclaims than kswap reclaims)
> > With the patch being reverted everything is fine again.
>
> Ouch. Yes, I think we have to revert this for now.
>
> How about this?
>
> ---
> From: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
> Subject: [patch] Revert "mm: vmscan: do not swap anon pages just because
> free+file is low"
>
> This reverts commit 0bf1457f0cfc ("mm: vmscan: do not swap anon pages
> just because free+file is low") because it introduced a regression in
> mostly-anonymous workloads, where reclaim would become ineffective and
> trap every allocating task in direct reclaim.
>
> The problem is that there is a runaway feedback loop in the scan
> balance between file and anon, where the balance tips heavily towards
> a tiny thrashing file LRU and anonymous pages are no longer being
> looked at. The commit in question removed the safe guard that would
> detect such situations and respond with forced anonymous reclaim.
>
> This commit was part of a series to fix premature swapping in loads
> with relatively little cache, and while it made a small difference,
> the cure is obviously worse than the disease. Revert it.
>
> Reported-by: Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@de.ibm.com>
> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> [3.12+]
> ---
> mm/vmscan.c | 18 ++++++++++++++++++
> 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
> index 9b6497eda806..169acb8e31c9 100644
> --- a/mm/vmscan.c
> +++ b/mm/vmscan.c
> @@ -1916,6 +1916,24 @@ static void get_scan_count(struct lruvec *lruvec, struct scan_control *sc,
> get_lru_size(lruvec, LRU_INACTIVE_FILE);
>
> /*
> + * Prevent the reclaimer from falling into the cache trap: as
> + * cache pages start out inactive, every cache fault will tip
> + * the scan balance towards the file LRU. And as the file LRU
> + * shrinks, so does the window for rotation from references.
> + * This means we have a runaway feedback loop where a tiny
> + * thrashing file LRU becomes infinitely more attractive than
> + * anon pages. Try to detect this based on file LRU size.
> + */
> + if (global_reclaim(sc)) {
> + unsigned long free = zone_page_state(zone, NR_FREE_PAGES);
> +
> + if (unlikely(file + free <= high_wmark_pages(zone))) {
> + scan_balance = SCAN_ANON;
> + goto out;
> + }
> + }
> +
> + /*
> * There is enough inactive page cache, do not reclaim
> * anything from the anonymous working set right now.
> */
> --
> 1.9.2
>
Acked-by: Rafael Aquini <aquini@redhat.com>