memcg: add page_cgroup_ino helper
This patchset introduces a new user API for tracking user memory pages that have not been used for a given period of time. The purpose of this is to provide the userspace with the means of tracking a workload's working set, i.e. the set of pages that are actively used by the workload. Knowing the working set size can be useful for partitioning the system more efficiently, e.g. by tuning memory cgroup limits appropriately, or for job placement within a compute cluster. ==== USE CASES ==== The unified cgroup hierarchy has memory.low and memory.high knobs, which are defined as the low and high boundaries for the workload working set size. However, the working set size of a workload may be unknown or change in time. With this patch set, one can periodically estimate the amount of memory unused by each cgroup and tune their memory.low and memory.high parameters accordingly, therefore optimizing the overall memory utilization. Another use case is balancing workloads within a compute cluster. Knowing how much memory is not really used by a workload unit may help take a more optimal decision when considering migrating the unit to another node within the cluster. Also, as noted by Minchan, this would be useful for per-process reclaim (https://lwn.net/Articles/545668/). With idle tracking, we could reclaim idle pages only by smart user memory manager. ==== USER API ==== The user API consists of two new files: * /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap. This file implements a bitmap where each bit corresponds to a page, indexed by PFN. When the bit is set, the corresponding page is idle. A page is considered idle if it has not been accessed since it was marked idle. To mark a page idle one should set the bit corresponding to the page by writing to the file. A value written to the file is OR-ed with the current bitmap value. Only user memory pages can be marked idle, for other page types input is silently ignored. Writing to this file beyond max PFN results in the ENXIO error. Only available when CONFIG_IDLE_PAGE_TRACKING is set. This file can be used to estimate the amount of pages that are not used by a particular workload as follows: 1. mark all pages of interest idle by setting corresponding bits in the /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap 2. wait until the workload accesses its working set 3. read /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap and count the number of bits set * /proc/kpagecgroup. This file contains a 64-bit inode number of the memory cgroup each page is charged to, indexed by PFN. Only available when CONFIG_MEMCG is set. This file can be used to find all pages (including unmapped file pages) accounted to a particular cgroup. Using /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap, one can then estimate the cgroup working set size. For an example of using these files for estimating the amount of unused memory pages per each memory cgroup, please see the script attached below. ==== REASONING ==== The reason to introduce the new user API instead of using /proc/PID/{clear_refs,smaps} is that the latter has two serious drawbacks: - it does not count unmapped file pages - it affects the reclaimer logic The new API attempts to overcome them both. For more details on how it is achieved, please see the comment to patch 6. ==== PATCHSET STRUCTURE ==== The patch set is organized as follows: - patch 1 adds page_cgroup_ino() helper for the sake of /proc/kpagecgroup and patches 2-3 do related cleanup - patch 4 adds /proc/kpagecgroup, which reports cgroup ino each page is charged to - patch 5 introduces a new mmu notifier callback, clear_young, which is a lightweight version of clear_flush_young; it is used in patch 6 - patch 6 implements the idle page tracking feature, including the userspace API, /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap - patch 7 exports idle flag via /proc/kpageflags ==== SIMILAR WORKS ==== Originally, the patch for tracking idle memory was proposed back in 2011 by Michel Lespinasse (see http://lwn.net/Articles/459269/). The main difference between Michel's patch and this one is that Michel implemented a kernel space daemon for estimating idle memory size per cgroup while this patch only provides the userspace with the minimal API for doing the job, leaving the rest up to the userspace. However, they both share the same idea of Idle/Young page flags to avoid affecting the reclaimer logic. ==== PERFORMANCE EVALUATION ==== SPECjvm2008 (https://www.spec.org/jvm2008/) was used to evaluate the performance impact introduced by this patch set. Three runs were carried out: - base: kernel without the patch - patched: patched kernel, the feature is not used - patched-active: patched kernel, 1 minute-period daemon is used for tracking idle memory For tracking idle memory, idlememstat utility was used: https://github.com/locker/idlememstat testcase base patched patched-active compiler 537.40 ( 0.00)% 532.26 (-0.96)% 538.31 ( 0.17)% compress 305.47 ( 0.00)% 301.08 (-1.44)% 300.71 (-1.56)% crypto 284.32 ( 0.00)% 282.21 (-0.74)% 284.87 ( 0.19)% derby 411.05 ( 0.00)% 413.44 ( 0.58)% 412.07 ( 0.25)% mpegaudio 189.96 ( 0.00)% 190.87 ( 0.48)% 189.42 (-0.28)% scimark.large 46.85 ( 0.00)% 46.41 (-0.94)% 47.83 ( 2.09)% scimark.small 412.91 ( 0.00)% 415.41 ( 0.61)% 421.17 ( 2.00)% serial 204.23 ( 0.00)% 213.46 ( 4.52)% 203.17 (-0.52)% startup 36.76 ( 0.00)% 35.49 (-3.45)% 35.64 (-3.05)% sunflow 115.34 ( 0.00)% 115.08 (-0.23)% 117.37 ( 1.76)% xml 620.55 ( 0.00)% 619.95 (-0.10)% 620.39 (-0.03)% composite 211.50 ( 0.00)% 211.15 (-0.17)% 211.67 ( 0.08)% time idlememstat: 17.20user 65.16system 2:15:23elapsed 1%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 8476maxresident)k 448inputs+40outputs (1major+36052minor)pagefaults 0swaps ==== SCRIPT FOR COUNTING IDLE PAGES PER CGROUP ==== #! /usr/bin/python # import os import stat import errno import struct CGROUP_MOUNT = "/sys/fs/cgroup/memory" BUFSIZE = 8 * 1024 # must be multiple of 8 def get_hugepage_size(): with open("/proc/meminfo", "r") as f: for s in f: k, v = s.split(":") if k == "Hugepagesize": return int(v.split()[0]) * 1024 PAGE_SIZE = os.sysconf("SC_PAGE_SIZE") HUGEPAGE_SIZE = get_hugepage_size() def set_idle(): f = open("/sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap", "wb", BUFSIZE) while True: try: f.write(struct.pack("Q", pow(2, 64) - 1)) except IOError as err: if err.errno == errno.ENXIO: break raise f.close() def count_idle(): f_flags = open("/proc/kpageflags", "rb", BUFSIZE) f_cgroup = open("/proc/kpagecgroup", "rb", BUFSIZE) with open("/sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap", "rb", BUFSIZE) as f: while f.read(BUFSIZE): pass # update idle flag idlememsz = {} while True: s1, s2 = f_flags.read(8), f_cgroup.read(8) if not s1 or not s2: break flags, = struct.unpack('Q', s1) cgino, = struct.unpack('Q', s2) unevictable = (flags >> 18) & 1 huge = (flags >> 22) & 1 idle = (flags >> 25) & 1 if idle and not unevictable: idlememsz[cgino] = idlememsz.get(cgino, 0) + \ (HUGEPAGE_SIZE if huge else PAGE_SIZE) f_flags.close() f_cgroup.close() return idlememsz if __name__ == "__main__": print "Setting the idle flag for each page..." set_idle() raw_input("Wait until the workload accesses its working set, " "then press Enter") print "Counting idle pages..." idlememsz = count_idle() for dir, subdirs, files in os.walk(CGROUP_MOUNT): ino = os.stat(dir)[stat.ST_INO] print dir + ": " + str(idlememsz.get(ino, 0) / 1024) + " kB" ==== END SCRIPT ==== This patch (of 8): Add page_cgroup_ino() helper to memcg. This function returns the inode number of the closest online ancestor of the memory cgroup a page is charged to. It is required for exporting information about which page is charged to which cgroup to userspace, which will be introduced by a following patch. Signed-off-by:Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov@parallels.com> Reviewed-by:
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