Skip to content
Commit 23067153 authored by Roman Gushchin's avatar Roman Gushchin Committed by Linus Torvalds
Browse files

mm: memory.low hierarchical behavior

This patch aims to address an issue in current memory.low semantics,
which makes it hard to use it in a hierarchy, where some leaf memory
cgroups are more valuable than others.

For example, there are memcgs A, A/B, A/C, A/D and A/E:

  A      A/memory.low = 2G, A/memory.current = 6G
 //\\
BC  DE   B/memory.low = 3G  B/memory.current = 2G
         C/memory.low = 1G  C/memory.current = 2G
         D/memory.low = 0   D/memory.current = 2G
	 E/memory.low = 10G E/memory.current = 0

If we apply memory pressure, B, C and D are reclaimed at the same pace
while A's usage exceeds 2G.  This is obviously wrong, as B's usage is
fully below B's memory.low, and C has 1G of protection as well.  Also, A
is pushed to the size, which is less than A's 2G memory.low, which is
also wrong.

A simple bash script (provided below) can be used to reproduce
the problem. Current results are:
  A:    1430097920
  A/B:  711929856
  A/C:  717426688
  A/D:  741376
  A/E:  0

To address the issue a concept of effective memory.low is introduced.
Effective memory.low is always equal or less than original memory.low.
In a case, when there is no memory.low overcommittment (and also for
top-level cgroups), these two values are equal.

Otherwise it's a part of parent's effective memory.low, calculated as a
cgroup's memory.low usage divided by sum of sibling's memory.low usages
(under memory.low usage I mean the size of actually protected memory:
memory.current if memory.current < memory.low, 0 otherwise).  It's
necessary to track the actual usage, because otherwise an empty cgroup
with memory.low set (A/E in my example) will affect actual memory
distribution, which makes no sense.  To avoid traversing the cgroup tree
twice, page_counters code is reused.

Calculating effective memory.low can be done in the reclaim path, as we
conveniently traversing the cgroup tree from top to bottom and check
memory.low on each level.  So, it's a perfect place to calculate
effective memory low and save it to use it for children cgroups.

This also eliminates a need to traverse the cgroup tree from bottom to
top each time to check if parent's guarantee is not exceeded.

Setting/resetting effective memory.low is intentionally racy, but it's
fine and shouldn't lead to any significant differences in actual memory
distribution.

With this patch applied results are matching the expectations:
  A:    2147930112
  A/B:  1428721664
  A/C:  718393344
  A/D:  815104
  A/E:  0

Test script:
  #!/bin/bash

  CGPATH="/sys/fs/cgroup"

  truncate /file1 --size 2G
  truncate /file2 --size 2G
  truncate /file3 --size 2G
  truncate /file4 --size 50G

  mkdir "${CGPATH}/A"
  echo "+memory" > "${CGPATH}/A/cgroup.subtree_control"
  mkdir "${CGPATH}/A/B" "${CGPATH}/A/C" "${CGPATH}/A/D" "${CGPATH}/A/E"

  echo 2G > "${CGPATH}/A/memory.low"
  echo 3G > "${CGPATH}/A/B/memory.low"
  echo 1G > "${CGPATH}/A/C/memory.low"
  echo 0 > "${CGPATH}/A/D/memory.low"
  echo 10G > "${CGPATH}/A/E/memory.low"

  echo $$ > "${CGPATH}/A/B/cgroup.procs" && vmtouch -qt /file1
  echo $$ > "${CGPATH}/A/C/cgroup.procs" && vmtouch -qt /file2
  echo $$ > "${CGPATH}/A/D/cgroup.procs" && vmtouch -qt /file3
  echo $$ > "${CGPATH}/cgroup.procs" && vmtouch -qt /file4

  echo "A:   " `cat "${CGPATH}/A/memory.current"`
  echo "A/B: " `cat "${CGPATH}/A/B/memory.current"`
  echo "A/C: " `cat "${CGPATH}/A/C/memory.current"`
  echo "A/D: " `cat "${CGPATH}/A/D/memory.current"`
  echo "A/E: " `cat "${CGPATH}/A/E/memory.current"`

  rmdir "${CGPATH}/A/B" "${CGPATH}/A/C" "${CGPATH}/A/D" "${CGPATH}/A/E"
  rmdir "${CGPATH}/A"
  rm /file1 /file2 /file3 /file4

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180405185921.4942-2-guro@fb.com


Signed-off-by: default avatarRoman Gushchin <guro@fb.com>
Acked-by: default avatarJohannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov.dev@gmail.com>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
parent bbec2e15
0% or .
You are about to add 0 people to the discussion. Proceed with caution.
Finish editing this message first!
Please register or to comment