Re: [PATCH v3 12/17] mm, compaction: more reliably increase direct compaction priority

[Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>]

On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:54:32AM +0200, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> During reclaim/compaction loop, compaction priority can be increased by the
> should_compact_retry() function, but the current code is not optimal. Priority
> is only increased when compaction_failed() is true, which means that compaction
> has scanned the whole zone. This may not happen even after multiple attempts
> with the lower priority due to parallel activity, so we might needlessly
> struggle on the lower priority and possibly run out of compaction retry
> attempts in the process.
> 
> We can remove these corner cases by increasing compaction priority regardless
> of compaction_failed(). Examining further the compaction result can be
> postponed only after reaching the highest priority. This is a simple solution
> and we don't need to worry about reaching the highest priority "too soon" here,
> because hen should_compact_retry() is called it means that the system is
> already struggling and the allocation is supposed to either try as hard as
> possible, or it cannot fail at all. There's not much point staying at lower
> priorities with heuristics that may result in only partial compaction.
> Also we now count compaction retries only after reaching the highest priority.

I'm not sure that this patch is safe. Deferring and skip-bit in
compaction is highly related to reclaim/compaction. Just ignoring them and (almost)
unconditionally increasing compaction priority will result in less
reclaim and less success rate on compaction. And, as a necessarily, it
would trigger OOM more frequently.

It would not be your fault. This patch is reasonable in current
situation. It just makes current things more deterministic
although I dislike that current things and this patch would amplify
those problem.

Thanks.

> The only exception here is the COMPACT_SKIPPED result, which means that
> compaction could not run at all due to being below order-0 watermarks. In that
> case, don't increase compaction priority, and check if compaction could proceed
> when everything reclaimable was reclaimed. Before this patch, this was tied to
> compaction_withdrawn(), but the other results considered there are in fact only
> possible due to low compaction priority so we can ignore them thanks to the
> patch. Since there are no other callers of compaction_withdrawn(), change its
> semantics to remove the low priority scenarios.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
> ---
>  include/linux/compaction.h | 28 ++-----------------------
>  mm/page_alloc.c            | 51 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------
>  2 files changed, 31 insertions(+), 48 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/compaction.h b/include/linux/compaction.h
> index 869b594cf4ff..a6b3d5d2ae53 100644
> --- a/include/linux/compaction.h
> +++ b/include/linux/compaction.h
> @@ -106,8 +106,8 @@ static inline bool compaction_failed(enum compact_result result)
>  }
>  
>  /*
> - * Compaction  has backed off for some reason. It might be throttling or
> - * lock contention. Retrying is still worthwhile.
> + * Compaction has backed off because it cannot proceed until there is enough
> + * free memory. Retrying is still worthwhile after reclaim.
>   */
>  static inline bool compaction_withdrawn(enum compact_result result)
>  {
> @@ -118,30 +118,6 @@ static inline bool compaction_withdrawn(enum compact_result result)
>  	if (result == COMPACT_SKIPPED)
>  		return true;
>  
> -	/*
> -	 * If compaction is deferred for high-order allocations, it is
> -	 * because sync compaction recently failed. If this is the case
> -	 * and the caller requested a THP allocation, we do not want
> -	 * to heavily disrupt the system, so we fail the allocation
> -	 * instead of entering direct reclaim.
> -	 */
> -	if (result == COMPACT_DEFERRED)
> -		return true;
> -
> -	/*
> -	 * If compaction in async mode encounters contention or blocks higher
> -	 * priority task we back off early rather than cause stalls.
> -	 */
> -	if (result == COMPACT_CONTENDED)
> -		return true;
> -
> -	/*
> -	 * Page scanners have met but we haven't scanned full zones so this
> -	 * is a back off in fact.
> -	 */
> -	if (result == COMPACT_PARTIAL_SKIPPED)
> -		return true;
> -
>  	return false;
>  }
>  
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index 204cc988fd64..e1efdc8d2a52 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -3217,7 +3217,7 @@ static inline bool
>  should_compact_retry(struct alloc_context *ac, int order, int alloc_flags,
>  		     enum compact_result compact_result,
>  		     enum compact_priority *compact_priority,
> -		     int compaction_retries)
> +		     int *compaction_retries)
>  {
>  	int max_retries = MAX_COMPACT_RETRIES;
>  
> @@ -3225,28 +3225,35 @@ should_compact_retry(struct alloc_context *ac, int order, int alloc_flags,
>  		return false;
>  
>  	/*
> -	 * compaction considers all the zone as desperately out of memory
> -	 * so it doesn't really make much sense to retry except when the
> -	 * failure could be caused by insufficient priority
> +	 * Compaction backed off due to watermark checks for order-0
> +	 * so the regular reclaim has to try harder and reclaim something
> +	 * Retry only if it looks like reclaim might have a chance.
>  	 */
> -	if (compaction_failed(compact_result)) {
> -		if (*compact_priority > MIN_COMPACT_PRIORITY) {
> -			(*compact_priority)--;
> -			return true;
> -		}
> -		return false;
> +	if (compaction_withdrawn(compact_result))
> +		return compaction_zonelist_suitable(ac, order, alloc_flags);
> +
> +	/*
> +	 * Compaction could have withdrawn early or skip some zones or
> +	 * pageblocks. We were asked to retry, which means the allocation
> +	 * should try really hard, so increase the priority if possible.
> +	 */
> +	if (*compact_priority > MIN_COMPACT_PRIORITY) {
> +		(*compact_priority)--;
> +		return true;
>  	}
>  
>  	/*
> -	 * make sure the compaction wasn't deferred or didn't bail out early
> -	 * due to locks contention before we declare that we should give up.
> -	 * But do not retry if the given zonelist is not suitable for
> -	 * compaction.
> +	 * Compaction considers all the zones as unfixably fragmented and we
> +	 * are on the highest priority, which means it can't be due to
> +	 * heuristics and it doesn't really make much sense to retry.
>  	 */
> -	if (compaction_withdrawn(compact_result))
> -		return compaction_zonelist_suitable(ac, order, alloc_flags);
> +	if (compaction_failed(compact_result))
> +		return false;
>  
>  	/*
> +	 * The remaining possibility is that compaction made progress and
> +	 * created a high-order page, but it was allocated by somebody else.
> +	 * To prevent thrashing, limit the number of retries in such case.
>  	 * !costly requests are much more important than __GFP_REPEAT
>  	 * costly ones because they are de facto nofail and invoke OOM
>  	 * killer to move on while costly can fail and users are ready
> @@ -3254,9 +3261,12 @@ should_compact_retry(struct alloc_context *ac, int order, int alloc_flags,
>  	 * would need much more detailed feedback from compaction to
>  	 * make a better decision.
>  	 */
> +	if (compaction_made_progress(compact_result))
> +		(*compaction_retries)++;
> +
>  	if (order > PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER)
>  		max_retries /= 4;
> -	if (compaction_retries <= max_retries)
> +	if (*compaction_retries <= max_retries)
>  		return true;
>  
>  	return false;
> @@ -3275,7 +3285,7 @@ static inline bool
>  should_compact_retry(struct alloc_context *ac, unsigned int order, int alloc_flags,
>  		     enum compact_result compact_result,
>  		     enum compact_priority *compact_priority,
> -		     int compaction_retries)
> +		     int *compaction_retries)
>  {
>  	struct zone *zone;
>  	struct zoneref *z;
> @@ -3672,9 +3682,6 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
>  	if (page)
>  		goto got_pg;
>  
> -	if (order && compaction_made_progress(compact_result))
> -		compaction_retries++;
> -
>  	/* Do not loop if specifically requested */
>  	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_NORETRY)
>  		goto nopage;
> @@ -3709,7 +3716,7 @@ __alloc_pages_slowpath(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
>  	if (did_some_progress > 0 &&
>  			should_compact_retry(ac, order, alloc_flags,
>  				compact_result, &compact_priority,
> -				compaction_retries))
> +				&compaction_retries))
>  		goto retry;
>  
>  	/* Reclaim has failed us, start killing things */
> -- 
> 2.8.4
> 
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