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Michal Hocko 73e64c51af mm, compaction: allow compaction for GFP_NOFS requests
compaction has been disabled for GFP_NOFS and GFP_NOIO requests since
the direct compaction was introduced by commit 56de7263fc ("mm:
compaction: direct compact when a high-order allocation fails").  The
main reason is that the migration of page cache pages might recurse back
to fs/io layer and we could potentially deadlock.  This is overly
conservative because all the anonymous memory is migrateable in the
GFP_NOFS context just fine.  This might be a large portion of the memory
in many/most workkloads.

Remove the GFP_NOFS restriction and make sure that we skip all fs pages
(those with a mapping) while isolating pages to be migrated.  We cannot
consider clean fs pages because they might need a metadata update so
only isolate pages without any mapping for nofs requests.

The effect of this patch will be probably very limited in many/most
workloads because higher order GFP_NOFS requests are quite rare,
although different configurations might lead to very different results.
David Chinner has mentioned a heavy metadata workload with 64kB block
which to quote him:

: Unfortunately, there was an era of cargo cult configuration tweaks in the
: Ceph community that has resulted in a large number of production machines
: with XFS filesystems configured this way.  And a lot of them store large
: numbers of small files and run under significant sustained memory
: pressure.
:
: I slowly working towards getting rid of these high order allocations and
: replacing them with the equivalent number of single page allocations, but
: I haven't got that (complex) change working yet.

We can do the following to simulate that workload:
$ mkfs.xfs -f -n size=64k <dev>
$ mount <dev> /mnt/scratch
$ time ./fs_mark  -D  10000  -S0  -n  100000  -s  0  -L  32 \
        -d  /mnt/scratch/0  -d  /mnt/scratch/1 \
        -d  /mnt/scratch/2  -d  /mnt/scratch/3 \
        -d  /mnt/scratch/4  -d  /mnt/scratch/5 \
        -d  /mnt/scratch/6  -d  /mnt/scratch/7 \
        -d  /mnt/scratch/8  -d  /mnt/scratch/9 \
        -d  /mnt/scratch/10  -d  /mnt/scratch/11 \
        -d  /mnt/scratch/12  -d  /mnt/scratch/13 \
        -d  /mnt/scratch/14  -d  /mnt/scratch/15

and indeed is hammers the system with many high order GFP_NOFS requests as
per a simle tracepoint during the load:
$ echo '!(gfp_flags & 0x80) && (gfp_flags &0x400000)' > $TRACE_MNT/events/kmem/mm_page_alloc/filter
I am getting
5287609 order=0
     37 order=1
1594905 order=2
3048439 order=3
6699207 order=4
  66645 order=5

My testing was done in a kvm guest so performance numbers should be
taken with a grain of salt but there seems to be a difference when the
patch is applied:

* Original kernel
FSUse%        Count         Size    Files/sec     App Overhead
     1      1600000            0       4300.1         20745838
     3      3200000            0       4239.9         23849857
     5      4800000            0       4243.4         25939543
     6      6400000            0       4248.4         19514050
     8      8000000            0       4262.1         20796169
     9      9600000            0       4257.6         21288675
    11     11200000            0       4259.7         19375120
    13     12800000            0       4220.7         22734141
    14     14400000            0       4238.5         31936458
    16     16000000            0       4231.5         23409901
    18     17600000            0       4045.3         23577700
    19     19200000            0       2783.4         58299526
    21     20800000            0       2678.2         40616302
    23     22400000            0       2693.5         83973996

and xfs complaining about memory allocation not making progress
[ 2304.372647] XFS: fs_mark(3289) possible memory allocation deadlock size 65624 in kmem_alloc (mode:0x2408240)
[ 2304.443323] XFS: fs_mark(3285) possible memory allocation deadlock size 65728 in kmem_alloc (mode:0x2408240)
[ 4796.772477] XFS: fs_mark(3424) possible memory allocation deadlock size 46936 in kmem_alloc (mode:0x2408240)
[ 4796.775329] XFS: fs_mark(3423) possible memory allocation deadlock size 51416 in kmem_alloc (mode:0x2408240)
[ 4797.388808] XFS: fs_mark(3424) possible memory allocation deadlock size 65728 in kmem_alloc (mode:0x2408240)

* Patched kernel
FSUse%        Count         Size    Files/sec     App Overhead
     1      1600000            0       4289.1         19243934
     3      3200000            0       4241.6         32828865
     5      4800000            0       4248.7         32884693
     6      6400000            0       4314.4         19608921
     8      8000000            0       4269.9         24953292
     9      9600000            0       4270.7         33235572
    11     11200000            0       4346.4         40817101
    13     12800000            0       4285.3         29972397
    14     14400000            0       4297.2         20539765
    16     16000000            0       4219.6         18596767
    18     17600000            0       4273.8         49611187
    19     19200000            0       4300.4         27944451
    21     20800000            0       4270.6         22324585
    22     22400000            0       4317.6         22650382
    24     24000000            0       4065.2         22297964

So the dropdown at Count 19200000 didn't happen and there was only a
single warning about allocation not making progress
[ 3063.815003] XFS: fs_mark(3272) possible memory allocation deadlock size 65624 in kmem_alloc (mode:0x2408240)

This suggests that the patch has helped even though there is not all that
much of anonymous memory as the workload mostly generates fs metadata.  I
assume the success rate would be higher with more anonymous memory which
should be the case in many workloads.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix comment]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20161012114721.31853-1-mhocko@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <js1304@gmail.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2016-12-14 16:04:07 -08:00
Documentation . various fixes and improvements to request-based DM and DM multipath 2016-12-14 11:01:00 -08:00
arch arm64 updates for 4.10: 2016-12-13 16:39:21 -08:00
block SCSI misc on 20161213 2016-12-14 10:49:33 -08:00
certs certs: Add a secondary system keyring that can be added to dynamically 2016-04-11 22:48:09 +01:00
crypto Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2016-12-10 16:21:55 -05:00
drivers . various fixes and improvements to request-based DM and DM multipath 2016-12-14 11:01:00 -08:00
firmware WHENCE: use https://linuxtv.org for LinuxTV URLs 2015-12-04 10:35:11 -02:00
fs btrfs: better handle btrfs_printk() defaults 2016-12-14 16:04:07 -08:00
include . various fixes and improvements to request-based DM and DM multipath 2016-12-14 11:01:00 -08:00
init Merge branch 'for-4.10' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tj/wq 2016-12-13 12:59:57 -08:00
ipc sched/wake_q: Rename WAKE_Q to DEFINE_WAKE_Q 2016-11-21 10:29:01 +01:00
kernel kernel/watchdog: use nmi registers snapshot in hardlockup handler 2016-12-14 16:04:07 -08:00
lib Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/shli/md 2016-12-14 10:58:17 -08:00
mm mm, compaction: allow compaction for GFP_NOFS requests 2016-12-14 16:04:07 -08:00
net Merge branch 'smp-hotplug-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2016-12-12 19:25:04 -08:00
samples VFIO updates for v4.10-rc1 2016-12-13 09:23:56 -08:00
scripts Char/Misc driver patches for 4.10-rc1 2016-12-13 12:11:01 -08:00
security Merge branch 'timers-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2016-12-12 19:56:15 -08:00
sound Main pull request for drm for 4.10 kernel 2016-12-13 09:35:09 -08:00
tools arm64 updates for 4.10: 2016-12-13 16:39:21 -08:00
usr usr/Kconfig: make initrd compression algorithm selection not expert 2014-12-13 12:42:52 -08:00
virt Small release, the most interesting stuff is x86 nested virt improvements. 2016-12-13 15:47:02 -08:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore Add hch to .get_maintainer.ignore 2015-08-21 14:30:10 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore Merge branch 'misc' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mmarek/kbuild 2016-08-02 16:48:52 -04:00
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COPYING
CREDITS Merge branch 'x86-microcode-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2016-12-12 15:23:02 -08:00
Kbuild scripts/gdb: provide linux constants 2016-05-23 17:04:14 -07:00
Kconfig kbuild: migrate all arch to the kconfig mainmenu upgrade 2010-09-19 22:54:11 -04:00
MAINTAINERS SCSI misc on 20161213 2016-12-14 10:49:33 -08:00
Makefile Linux 4.9 2016-12-11 11:17:54 -08:00
README README: add a new README file, pointing to the Documentation/ 2016-10-24 08:12:35 -02:00

README

Linux kernel
============

This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst

Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users.
These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.