[PATCH v3 0/3] vmstat bug fixes for nohz_full and isolated CPUs

Marcelo Tosatti
2023-06-05T19:04:10Z

This patch series addresses the following two problems:

1. A customer provided evidence indicating that a process
was stalled in direct reclaim:

- The process was trapped in throttle_direct_reclaim().
The function wait_event_killable() was called to wait condition
allow_direct_reclaim(pgdat) for current node to be true.
The allow_direct_reclaim(pgdat) examined the number of free pages
on the node by zone_page_state() which just returns value in
zone->vm_stat[NR_FREE_PAGES].

- On node #1, zone->vm_stat[NR_FREE_PAGES] was 0.
However, the freelist on this node was not empty.

- This inconsistent of vmstat value was caused by percpu vmstat on
nohz_full cpus. Every increment/decrement of vmstat is performed
on percpu vmstat counter at first, then pooled diffs are cumulated
to the zone's vmstat counter in timely manner. However, on nohz_full
cpus (in case of this customer's system, 48 of 52 cpus) these pooled
diffs were not cumulated once the cpu had no event on it so that
the cpu started sleeping infinitely.
I checked percpu vmstat and found there were total 69 counts not
cumulated to the zone's vmstat counter yet.

- In this situation, kswapd did not help the trapped process.
In pgdat_balanced(), zone_wakermark_ok_safe() examined the number
of free pages on the node by zone_page_state_snapshot() which
checks pending counts on percpu vmstat.
Therefore kswapd could know there were 69 free pages correctly.
Since zone->_watermark = {8, 20, 32}, kswapd did not work because
69 was greater than 32 as high watermark.

2. With a task that busy loops on a given CPU,
the kworker interruption to execute vmstat_update
is undesired and may exceed latency thresholds
for certain applications.

First issue is solved by using _snapshot version of
the counters on allow_direct_reclaim.

Second issue is fixed by disabling periodic vmstat
updates for nohz_full CPUs.

Thanks to Aaron Tomlin for diagnosing issue 1 and writing
the initial patch series.

Performance details for the kworker interruption:

With workloads that are running on isolated cpus with nohz full mode to
shield off any kernel interruption. For example, a VM running a
time sensitive application with a 50us maximum acceptable interruption
(use case: soft PLC).

oslat 1094.456862: sys_mlock(start: 7f7ed0000b60, len: 1000)
oslat 1094.456971: workqueue_queue_work: ... function=vmstat_update ...
oslat 1094.456974: sched_switch: prev_comm=oslat ... ==> next_comm=kworker/5:1 ...
kworker 1094.456978: sched_switch: prev_comm=kworker/5:1 ==> next_comm=oslat ...

The example above shows an additional 7us for the

oslat -> kworker -> oslat

switches. In the case of a virtualized CPU, and the vmstat_update
interruption in the host (of a qemu-kvm vcpu), the latency penalty
observed in the guest is higher than 50us, violating the acceptable
latency threshold.

The isolated vCPU can perform operations that modify per-CPU page counters,
for example to complete I/O operations:

CPU 11/KVM-9540 [001] dNh1. 2314.248584: mod_zone_page_state <-__folio_end_writeback
CPU 11/KVM-9540 [001] dNh1. 2314.248585: <stack trace>
=> 0xffffffffc042b083
=> mod_zone_page_state
=> __folio_end_writeback
=> folio_end_writeback
=> iomap_finish_ioend
=> blk_mq_end_request_batch
=> nvme_irq
=> __handle_irq_event_percpu
=> handle_irq_event
=> handle_edge_irq
=> __common_interrupt
=> common_interrupt
=> asm_common_interrupt
=> vmx_do_interrupt_nmi_irqoff
=> vmx_handle_exit_irqoff
=> vcpu_enter_guest
=> vcpu_run
=> kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run
=> kvm_vcpu_ioctl
=> __x64_sys_ioctl
=> do_syscall_64
=> entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe

v3: improve changelog (Michal Hocko)
v2: use cpu_is_isolated (Michal Hocko)
opencode schedule_on_each_cpu (Michal Hocko)

mm/vmscan.c | 2 +-
mm/vmstat.c | 39 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
2 files changed, 36 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)