[PATCH 3.16 328/366] dm bufio: avoid sleeping while holding the dm_bufio lock

Ben Hutchings
2018-11-12T05:48:23Z

From: Douglas Anderson <dianders@chromium.org>

commit 9ea61cac0b1ad0c09022f39fd97e9b99a2cfc2dc upstream.

We've seen in-field reports showing _lots_ (18 in one case, 41 in
another) of tasks all sitting there blocked on:

mutex_lock+0x4c/0x68
dm_bufio_shrink_count+0x38/0x78
shrink_slab.part.54.constprop.65+0x100/0x464
shrink_zone+0xa8/0x198

In the two cases analyzed, we see one task that looks like this:

Workqueue: kverityd verity_prefetch_io

__switch_to+0x9c/0xa8
__schedule+0x440/0x6d8
schedule+0x94/0xb4
schedule_timeout+0x204/0x27c
schedule_timeout_uninterruptible+0x44/0x50
wait_iff_congested+0x9c/0x1f0
shrink_inactive_list+0x3a0/0x4cc
shrink_lruvec+0x418/0x5cc
shrink_zone+0x88/0x198
try_to_free_pages+0x51c/0x588
__alloc_pages_nodemask+0x648/0xa88
__get_free_pages+0x34/0x7c
alloc_buffer+0xa4/0x144
__bufio_new+0x84/0x278
dm_bufio_prefetch+0x9c/0x154
verity_prefetch_io+0xe8/0x10c
process_one_work+0x240/0x424
worker_thread+0x2fc/0x424
kthread+0x10c/0x114

...and that looks to be the one holding the mutex.

The problem has been reproduced on fairly easily:
0. Be running Chrome OS w/ verity enabled on the root filesystem
1. Pick test patch: http://crosreview.com/412360
2. Install launchBalloons.sh and balloon.arm from
http://crbug.com/468342
...that's just a memory stress test app.
3. On a 4GB rk3399 machine, run
nice ./launchBalloons.sh 4 900 100000
...that tries to eat 4 * 900 MB of memory and keep accessing.
4. Login to the Chrome web browser and restore many tabs

With that, I've seen printouts like:
DOUG: long bufio 90758 ms
...and stack trace always show's we're in dm_bufio_prefetch().

The problem is that we try to allocate memory with GFP_NOIO while
we're holding the dm_bufio lock. Instead we should be using
GFP_NOWAIT. Using GFP_NOIO can cause us to sleep while holding the
lock and that causes the above problems.

The current behavior explained by David Rientjes:

It will still try reclaim initially because __GFP_WAIT (or
__GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM) is set by GFP_NOIO. This is the cause of
contention on dm_bufio_lock() that the thread holds. You want to
pass GFP_NOWAIT instead of GFP_NOIO to alloc_buffer() when holding a
mutex that can be contended by a concurrent slab shrinker (if
count_objects didn't use a trylock, this pattern would trivially
deadlock).

This change significantly increases responsiveness of the system while
in this state. It makes a real difference because it unblocks kswapd.
In the bug report analyzed, kswapd was hung:

kswapd0 D ffffffc000204fd8 0 72 2 0x00000000
Call trace:
[<ffffffc000204fd8>] __switch_to+0x9c/0xa8
[<ffffffc00090b794>] __schedule+0x440/0x6d8
[<ffffffc00090bac0>] schedule+0x94/0xb4
[<ffffffc00090be44>] schedule_preempt_disabled+0x28/0x44
[<ffffffc00090d900>] __mutex_lock_slowpath+0x120/0x1ac
[<ffffffc00090d9d8>] mutex_lock+0x4c/0x68
[<ffffffc000708e7c>] dm_bufio_shrink_count+0x38/0x78
[<ffffffc00030b268>] shrink_slab.part.54.constprop.65+0x100/0x464
[<ffffffc00030dbd8>] shrink_zone+0xa8/0x198
[<ffffffc00030e578>] balance_pgdat+0x328/0x508
[<ffffffc00030eb7c>] kswapd+0x424/0x51c
[<ffffffc00023f06c>] kthread+0x10c/0x114
[<ffffffc000203dd0>] ret_from_fork+0x10/0x40

By unblocking kswapd memory pressure should be reduced.

Suggested-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>
Signed-off-by: Douglas Anderson <dianders@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Cc: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>
---
drivers/md/dm-bufio.c | 5 +++--
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

--- a/drivers/md/dm-bufio.c
+++ b/drivers/md/dm-bufio.c
@@ -778,7 +778,8 @@ static struct dm_buffer *__alloc_buffer_
* dm-bufio is resistant to allocation failures (it just keeps
* one buffer reserved in cases all the allocations fail).
* So set flags to not try too hard:
- * GFP_NOIO: don't recurse into the I/O layer
+ * GFP_NOWAIT: don't wait; if we need to sleep we'll release our
+ * mutex and wait ourselves.
* __GFP_NORETRY: don't retry and rather return failure
* __GFP_NOMEMALLOC: don't use emergency reserves
* __GFP_NOWARN: don't print a warning in case of failure
@@ -788,7 +789,7 @@ static struct dm_buffer *__alloc_buffer_
*/
while (1) {
if (dm_bufio_cache_size_latch != 1) {
- b = alloc_buffer(c, GFP_NOIO | __GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_NOMEMALLOC | __GFP_NOWARN);
+ b = alloc_buffer(c, GFP_NOWAIT | __GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_NOMEMALLOC | __GFP_NOWARN);
if (b)
return b;
}