Re: [Bug #14141] order 2 page allocation failures in iwlagn

[Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 12:16:30AM +0900, KOSAKI Motohiro wrote:
> 2009/10/27 Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>:
> > On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 10:06:09PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> >> On Tuesday 20 October 2009, Mel Gorman wrote:
> >> > I've attached a patch below that should allow us to cheat. When it's
> >> > applied, it outputs who called congestion_wait(), how long the timeout
> >> > was and how long it waited for. By comparing before and after sleep
> >> > times, we should be able to see which of the callers has significantly
> >> > changed and if it's something easily addressable.
> >>
> >> The results from this look fairly interesting (although I may be a bad
> >> judge as I don't really know what I'm looking at ;-).
> >>
> >> I've tested with two kernels:
> >> 1) 2.6.31.1: 1 test run
> >> 2) 2.6.31.1 + congestion_wait() reverts: 2 test runs
> >>
> >> The 1st kernel had the expected "freeze" while reading commits in gitk;
> >> reading commits with the 2nd kernel was more fluent.
> >> I did 2 runs with the 2nd kernel as the first run had a fairly long music
> >> skip and more SKB errors than expected. The second run was fairly normal
> >> with no music skips at all even though it had a few SKB errors.
> >>
> >> Data for the tests:
> >>                               1st kernel      2nd kernel 1    2nd kernel 2
> >> end reading commits           1:15            1:00            0:55
> >>   "freeze"                    yes             no              no
> >> branch data shown             1:55            1:15            1:10
> >> system quiet                  2:25            1:50            1:45
> >> # SKB allocation errors               10              53              5
> >>
> >> Note that the test is substantially faster with the 2nd kernel and that the
> >> SKB errors don't really affect the duration of the test.
> >>
> >
> > Ok. I think that despite expectations, the writeback changes have
> > changed the timing significantly enough to be worth examining closer.
> >
> >>
> >> - without the revert 'background_writeout' is called a lot less frequently,
> >>   but when it's called it gets long delays
> >> - without the revert you have 'wb_kupdate', which is relatively expensive
> >> - with the revert 'shrink_list' is relatively expensive, although not
> >>   really in absolute terms
> >>
> >
> > Lets look at the callers that waited in congestion_wait() for at least
> > 25 jiffies.
> >
> > 2.6.31.1-async-sync-congestion-wait i.e. vanilla kernel
> > generated with: cat kern.log_1_test | awk -F ] '{print $2}' | sort -k 5 -n | uniq -c
> >     24  background_writeout  congestion_wait sync=0 delay 25 timeout 25
> >    203  kswapd               congestion_wait sync=0 delay 25 timeout 25
> >      5  shrink_list          congestion_wait sync=0 delay 25 timeout 25
> >    155  try_to_free_pages    congestion_wait sync=0 delay 25 timeout 25
> >    145  wb_kupdate           congestion_wait sync=0 delay 25 timeout 25
> >      2  kswapd               congestion_wait sync=0 delay 26 timeout 25
> >      8  wb_kupdate           congestion_wait sync=0 delay 26 timeout 25
> >      1  try_to_free_pages    congestion_wait sync=0 delay 54 timeout 25
> >
> > 2.6.31.1-write-congestion-wait i.e. kernel with patch reverted
> > generated with: cat kern.log_2.1_test | awk -F ] '{print $2}' | sort -k 5 -n | uniq -c
> >      2  background_writeout  congestion_wait rw=1 delay 25 timeout 25
> >    188  kswapd               congestion_wait rw=1 delay 25 timeout 25
> >     14  shrink_list          congestion_wait rw=1 delay 25 timeout 25
> >    181  try_to_free_pages    congestion_wait rw=1 delay 25 timeout 25
> >      5  kswapd               congestion_wait rw=1 delay 26 timeout 25
> >     10  try_to_free_pages    congestion_wait rw=1 delay 26 timeout 25
> >      3  try_to_free_pages    congestion_wait rw=1 delay 27 timeout 25
> >      1  kswapd               congestion_wait rw=1 delay 29 timeout 25
> >      1  __alloc_pages_nodemask congestion_wait rw=1 delay 30 timeout 5
> >      1  try_to_free_pages    congestion_wait rw=1 delay 31 timeout 25
> >      1  try_to_free_pages    congestion_wait rw=1 delay 35 timeout 25
> >      1  kswapd               congestion_wait rw=1 delay 51 timeout 25
> >      1  try_to_free_pages    congestion_wait rw=1 delay 56 timeout 25
> >
> > So, wb_kupdate and background_writeout are the big movers in terms of waiting,
> > not the direct reclaimers which is what we were expecting. Of those big
> > movers, wb_kupdate is the most interested because compare the following
> >
> > $ cat kern.log_2.1_test | awk -F ] '{print $2}' | sort -k 5 -n | uniq -c | grep wb_kup
> > [ no output ]
> > $ $ cat kern.log_1_test | awk -F ] '{print $2}' | sort -k 5 -n | uniq -c | grep wb_kup
> >      1  wb_kupdate           congestion_wait sync=0 delay 15 timeout 25
> >      1  wb_kupdate           congestion_wait sync=0 delay 23 timeout 25
> >    145  wb_kupdate           congestion_wait sync=0 delay 25 timeout 25
> >      8  wb_kupdate           congestion_wait sync=0 delay 26 timeout 25
> >
> > The vanilla kernel is not waiting in wb_kupdate at all.
> >
> > Jens, before the congestion_wait() changes, wb_kupdate was waiting on
> > congestion and afterwards it's not. Furthermore, look at the number of pages
> > that are queued for writeback in the two page allocation failure reports.
> >
> > without-revert: writeback:65653
> > with-revert:    writeback:21713
> >
> > So, after the move to async/sync, a lot more pages are getting queued
> > for writeback - more than three times the number of pages are queued for
> > writeback with the vanilla kernel. This amount of congestion might be why
> > direct reclaimers and kswapd's timings have changed so much.
> >
> > Chris Mason hinted at this but I didn't quite "get it" at the time but is it
> > possible that writeback_inodes() is converting what is expected to be async
> > IO into sync IO? One way of checking this is if Frans could test the patch
> > below that makes wb_kupdate wait on sync instead of async.
> >
> > If this makes a difference, I think the three main areas of trouble we
> > are now seeing are
> >
> >        1. page allocator regressions - mostly fixed hopefully
> >        2. page writeback change in timing - theory yet to be confirmed
> >        3. drivers using more atomics - iwlagn specific, being dealt with
> >
> > Of course, the big problem is if the changes are due to major timing
> > differences in page writeback, then mainline is a totally different
> > shape of problem as pdflush has been replaced there.
> >
> > ====
> > Have wb_kupdate wait on sync IO congestion instead of async
> >
> > wb_kupdate is expected to only have queued up pages for async IO.
> > However, something screwy is happening because it never appears to go to
> > sleep. Frans, can you test with this patch instead of the revert please?
> > Preferably, keep the verbose-congestion_wait patch applied so we can
> > still get an idea who is going to sleep and for how long when calling
> > congestion_wait. thanks
> >
> > Not-signed-off-hacket-job: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
> > ---
> >
> > diff --git a/mm/page-writeback.c b/mm/page-writeback.c
> > index 81627eb..cb646dd 100644
> > --- a/mm/page-writeback.c
> > +++ b/mm/page-writeback.c
> > @@ -787,7 +787,7 @@ static void wb_kupdate(unsigned long arg)
> >                writeback_inodes(&wbc);
> >                if (wbc.nr_to_write > 0) {
> >                        if (wbc.encountered_congestion || wbc.more_io)
> > -                               congestion_wait(BLK_RW_ASYNC, HZ/10);
> > +                               congestion_wait(BLK_RW_SYNC, HZ/10);
> >                        else
> >                                break;  /* All the old data is written */
> >                }
> 
> Hmm, This doesn't looks correct to me.
> 
> BLK_RW_ASYNC mean async write.
> BLK_RW_SYNC  mean read and sync-write.
> 
> wb_kupdate use WB_SYNC_NONE. it's async write.
> 

I don't think it's correct either which is why I described it as
"something screwy is happening because it never appears to go to sleep".
This is despite there being a whole lot of pages queued for writeback
according to the page allocation failure reports. 

-- 
Mel Gorman
Part-time Phd Student                          Linux Technology Center
University of Limerick                         IBM Dublin Software Lab

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