Re: [PATCH v3 2/2] mm, thp: avoid unnecessary swapin in khugepaged

[Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>]

On 03/14/2016 10:40 PM, Ebru Akagunduz wrote:
> Currently khugepaged makes swapin readahead to improve
> THP collapse rate. This patch checks vm statistics
> to avoid workload of swapin, if unnecessary. So that
> when system under pressure, khugepaged won't consume
> resources to swapin.
>
> The patch was tested with a test program that allocates
> 800MB of memory, writes to it, and then sleeps. The system
> was forced to swap out all. Afterwards, the test program
> touches the area by writing, it skips a page in each
> 20 pages of the area. When waiting to swapin readahead
> left part of the test, the memory forced to be busy
> doing page reclaim. There was enough free memory during
> test, khugepaged did not swapin readahead due to business.
>
> Test results:
>
>                          After swapped out
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>                | Anonymous | AnonHugePages | Swap      | Fraction  |
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> With patch    | 206608 kB |  204800 kB    | 593392 kB |    %99    |
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Without patch | 351308 kB | 350208 kB     | 448692 kB |    %99    |
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                          After swapped in (waiting 10 minutes)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>                | Anonymous | AnonHugePages | Swap      | Fraction  |
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> With patch    | 551992 kB | 368640 kB     | 248008 kB |    %66    |
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Without patch | 586816 kB | 464896 kB     | 213184 kB |    %79    |
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Signed-off-by: Ebru Akagunduz <ebru.akagunduz@gmail.com>

Looks like a step in a good direction. Still might be worthwile to also 
wait for the swapin to complete, and actually collapse immediately, no?

> ---
> Changes in v2:
>   - Add reference to specify which patch fixed (Ebru Akagunduz)

The reference is again missing in v3.

>   - Fix commit subject line (Ebru Akagunduz)
>
> Changes in v3:
>   - Remove default values of allocstall (Kirill A. Shutemov)
>
>   mm/huge_memory.c | 13 +++++++++++--
>   1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/mm/huge_memory.c b/mm/huge_memory.c
> index 86e9666..67a398c 100644
> --- a/mm/huge_memory.c
> +++ b/mm/huge_memory.c
> @@ -102,6 +102,7 @@ static DECLARE_WAIT_QUEUE_HEAD(khugepaged_wait);
>    */
>   static unsigned int khugepaged_max_ptes_none __read_mostly;
>   static unsigned int khugepaged_max_ptes_swap __read_mostly;
> +static unsigned long int allocstall;

"int" here is unnecessary

>
>   static int khugepaged(void *none);
>   static int khugepaged_slab_init(void);
> @@ -2438,7 +2439,7 @@ static void collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm,
>   	struct page *new_page;
>   	spinlock_t *pmd_ptl, *pte_ptl;
>   	int isolated = 0, result = 0;
> -	unsigned long hstart, hend;
> +	unsigned long hstart, hend, swap, curr_allocstall;
>   	struct mem_cgroup *memcg;
>   	unsigned long mmun_start;	/* For mmu_notifiers */
>   	unsigned long mmun_end;		/* For mmu_notifiers */
> @@ -2493,7 +2494,14 @@ static void collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm,
>   		goto out;
>   	}
>
> -	__collapse_huge_page_swapin(mm, vma, address, pmd);
> +	swap = get_mm_counter(mm, MM_SWAPENTS);
> +	curr_allocstall = sum_vm_event(ALLOCSTALL);
> +	/*
> +	 * When system under pressure, don't swapin readahead.
> +	 * So that avoid unnecessary resource consuming.
> +	 */
> +	if (allocstall == curr_allocstall && swap != 0)
> +		__collapse_huge_page_swapin(mm, vma, address, pmd);
>
>   	anon_vma_lock_write(vma->anon_vma);
>
> @@ -2790,6 +2798,7 @@ skip:
>   			VM_BUG_ON(khugepaged_scan.address < hstart ||
>   				  khugepaged_scan.address + HPAGE_PMD_SIZE >
>   				  hend);
> +			allocstall = sum_vm_event(ALLOCSTALL);

Why here? Rik said in v2:

> Khugepaged stores the allocstall value when it goes to sleep,
> and checks it before calling (or not) __collapse_huge_page_swapin.

But that's not true, this is not "when it goes to sleep".
So AFAICS it only observes the allocstalls between starting to scan a 
single pmd, and trying to collapse the pmd. So the window is quite tiny 
especially compared to I/O speeds, and this will IMHO catch only really 
frequent stalls. Placing it really at "when it goes to sleep" sounds better.

>   			ret = khugepaged_scan_pmd(mm, vma,
>   						  khugepaged_scan.address,
>   						  hpage);
>

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