Re: [PATCH v2] vmscan: fix increasing nr_isolated incurred by putback unevictable pages

Jaewon Kim
2015-08-05T00:52:16Z

On 2015년 08월 05일 08:31, Minchan Kim wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 03:09:37PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
>> On Tue, 04 Aug 2015 19:40:08 +0900 Jaewon Kim <jaewon31.kim@samsung.com> wrote:
>>
>>> reclaim_clean_pages_from_list() assumes that shrink_page_list() returns
>>> number of pages removed from the candidate list. But shrink_page_list()
>>> puts back mlocked pages without passing it to caller and without
>>> counting as nr_reclaimed. This incurrs increasing nr_isolated.
>>> To fix this, this patch changes shrink_page_list() to pass unevictable
>>> pages back to caller. Caller will take care those pages.
>>>
>>> ..
>>>
>>> --- a/mm/vmscan.c
>>> +++ b/mm/vmscan.c
>>> @@ -1157,7 +1157,7 @@ cull_mlocked:
>>> if (PageSwapCache(page))
>>> try_to_free_swap(page);
>>> unlock_page(page);
>>> - putback_lru_page(page);
>>> + list_add(&page->lru, &ret_pages);
>>> continue;
>>>
>>> activate_locked:
>>
>> Is this going to cause a whole bunch of mlocked pages to be migrated
>> whereas in current kernels they stay where they are?
>>
>
> It fixes two issues.
>
> 1. With unevictable page, cma_alloc will be successful.
>
> Exactly speaking, cma_alloc of current kernel will fail due to unevictable pages.
>
> 2. fix leaking of NR_ISOLATED counter of vmstat
>
> With it, too_many_isolated works. Otherwise, it could make hang until
> the process get SIGKILL.
>
> So, I think it's stable material.
>
> Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
>
>
>
Hello

Traditional shrink_inactive_list will put back the unevictable pages as it does through putback_inactive_pages.
However as Minchan Kim said, cma_alloc will be more successful by migrating unevictable pages.
In current kernel, I think, cma_alloc is already trying to migrate unevictable pages except clean page cache.
This patch will allow clean page cache also to be migrated in cma_alloc.

Thank you