[PATCH v2 1/2] mm/zswap: Fix global shrinker when memory cgroup is disabled

[PATCH v2 1/2] mm/zswap: Fix global shrinker when memory cgroup is disabled

[Hao Jia]

From: Hao Jia <jiahao1@lixiang.com>

Zswap writeback on hitting the pool limit is broken when memory cgroup
is disabled, because mem_cgroup_iter() always returns NULL. Therefore,
the global shrinker shrink_worker() always takes the !memcg branch.
After MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES empty walks, the worker simply gives up, so it
fails to write back anything.

Therefore, when memory cgroup is disabled, fall through with the !memcg
branch and shrink the root memcg directly.

With memcg disabled, shrink_memcg() only returns -ENOENT when the root
LRU is empty, which means the total pages are already below thr. In the
absence of heavy concurrent zswap stores, the loop then safely bails out
via the zswap_total_pages() <= thr check; otherwise, it will resume
shrinking the memcg after processing the reschedule check. For any other
return value from shrink_memcg(), the loop is guaranteed to terminate,
either after MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES failures or once the threshold is met.

Fixes: a65b0e7607cc ("zswap: make shrinking memcg-aware")
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Suggested-by: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry@kernel.org>
Reported-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry@kernel.org>
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAO9r8zPVzMKFbCixxD-qgtRrkFxWVrHiZZeLc=eyTPKPVQgX4g@mail.gmail.com
Signed-off-by: Hao Jia <jiahao1@lixiang.com>
---
 mm/zswap.c | 13 +++++++------
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/zswap.c b/mm/zswap.c
index b5a17ea20237..48fc7b575e24 100644
--- a/mm/zswap.c
+++ b/mm/zswap.c
@@ -1356,11 +1356,12 @@ static void shrink_worker(struct work_struct *w)
 		} while (memcg && !mem_cgroup_tryget_online(memcg));
 		spin_unlock(&zswap_shrink_lock);
 
-		if (!memcg) {
-			/*
-			 * Continue shrinking without incrementing failures if
-			 * we found candidate memcgs in the last tree walk.
-			 */
+		/*
+		 * A NULL memcg ends a full hierarchy pass (except when memcg is
+		 * disabled, where it is always NULL: fall through to the root LRU).
+		 * Count a failure only if the last pass found no candidates.
+		 */
+		if (!memcg && !mem_cgroup_disabled()) {
 			if (!attempts && ++failures == MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES)
 				break;
 
@@ -1379,7 +1380,7 @@ static void shrink_worker(struct work_struct *w)
 		 * and failures.
 		 */
 		if (ret == -ENOENT)
-			continue;
+			goto resched;
 		++attempts;
 
 		if (ret && ++failures == MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES)
-- 
2.34.1

Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] mm/zswap: Fix global shrinker when memory cgroup is disabled

[Johannes Weiner]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2026 at 04:51:50PM +0800, Hao Jia wrote:
> From: Hao Jia <jiahao1@lixiang.com>
> 
> Zswap writeback on hitting the pool limit is broken when memory cgroup
> is disabled, because mem_cgroup_iter() always returns NULL. Therefore,
> the global shrinker shrink_worker() always takes the !memcg branch.
> After MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES empty walks, the worker simply gives up, so it
> fails to write back anything.
> 
> Therefore, when memory cgroup is disabled, fall through with the !memcg
> branch and shrink the root memcg directly.
> 
> With memcg disabled, shrink_memcg() only returns -ENOENT when the root
> LRU is empty, which means the total pages are already below thr. In the
> absence of heavy concurrent zswap stores, the loop then safely bails out
> via the zswap_total_pages() <= thr check; otherwise, it will resume
> shrinking the memcg after processing the reschedule check. For any other
> return value from shrink_memcg(), the loop is guaranteed to terminate,
> either after MAX_RECLAIM_RETRIES failures or once the threshold is met.
> 
> Fixes: a65b0e7607cc ("zswap: make shrinking memcg-aware")
> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
> Suggested-by: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@gmail.com>
> Acked-by: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@gmail.com>
> Acked-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry@kernel.org>
> Reported-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry@kernel.org>
> Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAO9r8zPVzMKFbCixxD-qgtRrkFxWVrHiZZeLc=eyTPKPVQgX4g@mail.gmail.com
> Signed-off-by: Hao Jia <jiahao1@lixiang.com>

Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>