Re: kswapd0: page allocation failure: order:0, mode:0x820(GFP_ATOMIC), nodemask=(null),cpuset=/,mems_allowed=0 (Kernel v6.5.9, 32bit ppc)

[Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@google.com>]

On Tue, Jun 4, 2024 at 4:45 AM Erhard Furtner <erhard_f@mailbox.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 3 Jun 2024 16:24:02 -0700
> Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@google.com> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for bisecting. Taking a look at the thread, it seems like you
> > have a very limited area of memory to allocate kernel memory from. One
> > possible reason why that commit can cause an issue is because we will
> > have multiple instances of the zsmalloc slab caches 'zspage' and
> > 'zs_handle', which may contribute to fragmentation in slab memory.
> >
> > Do you have /proc/slabinfo from a good and a bad run by any chance?
> >
> > Also, could you check if the attached patch helps? It makes sure that
> > even when we use multiple zsmalloc zpools, we will use a single slab
> > cache of each type.
>
> Thanks for looking into this! I got you 'cat /proc/slabinfo' from a good HEAD, from a bad HEAD and from the bad HEAD + your patch applied.
>
> Good was 6be3601517d90b728095d70c14f3a04b9adcb166, bad was b8cf32dc6e8c75b712cbf638e0fd210101c22f17 which I got both from my bisect.log. I got the slabinfo shortly after boot and a 2nd time shortly before the OOM or the kswapd0: page allocation failure happens. I terminated the workload (stress-ng --vm 2 --vm-bytes 1930M --verify -v) manually shortly before the 2 GiB RAM exhausted and got the slabinfo then.
>
> The patch applied to git b8cf32dc6e8c75b712cbf638e0fd210101c22f17 unfortunately didn't make a difference, I got the kswapd0: page allocation failure nevertheless.

Thanks for trying this out. The patch reduces the amount of wasted
memory due to the 'zs_handle' and 'zspage' caches by an order of
magnitude, but it was a small number to begin with (~250K).

I cannot think of other reasons why having multiple zsmalloc pools
will end up using more memory in the 0.25GB zone that the kernel
allocations can be made from.

The number of zpools can be made configurable or determined at runtime
by the size of the machine, but I don't want to do this without
understanding the problem here first. Adding other zswap and zsmalloc
folks in case they have any ideas.

>
> Regards,
> Erhard