Re: [PATCH 5/5] vmscan: Age anonymous memory even when swap is off.

[John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>]

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 10:33 AM, Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> wrote:
> On 03/21/2014 05:17 PM, John Stultz wrote:
>>
>> Currently we don't shrink/scan the anonymous lrus when swap is off.
>> This is problematic for volatile range purging on swapless systems/
>>
>> This patch naievely changes the vmscan code to continue scanning
>> and shrinking the lrus even when there is no swap.
>>
>> It obviously has performance issues.
>>
>> Thoughts on how best to implement this would be appreciated.
>>
>> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
>> Cc: Android Kernel Team <kernel-team@android.com>
>> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
>> Cc: Robert Love <rlove@google.com>
>> Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
>> Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
>> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@sr71.net>
>> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
>> Cc: Dmitry Adamushko <dmitry.adamushko@gmail.com>
>> Cc: Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>
>> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
>> Cc: Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>
>> Cc: Taras Glek <tglek@mozilla.com>
>> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
>> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@gmail.com>
>> Cc: Michel Lespinasse <walken@google.com>
>> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
>> Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org <linux-mm@kvack.org>
>> Signed-off-by: John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>
>> ---
>>   mm/vmscan.c | 26 ++++----------------------
>>   1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
>> index 34f159a..07b0a8c 100644
>> --- a/mm/vmscan.c
>> +++ b/mm/vmscan.c
>> @@ -155,9 +155,8 @@ static unsigned long zone_reclaimable_pages(struct
>> zone *zone)
>>         nr = zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_FILE) +
>>              zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_FILE);
>>
>> -       if (get_nr_swap_pages() > 0)
>> -               nr += zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_ANON) +
>> -                     zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_ANON);
>> +       nr += zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_ANON) +
>> +             zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_ANON);
>>
>>         return nr;
>
>
> Not all of the anonymous pages will be reclaimable.
>
> Is there some counter that keeps track of how many
> volatile range pages there are in each zone?

So right, keeping statistics like NR_VOLATILE_PAGES (as well as
possibly NR_PURGED_VOLATILE_PAGES), would likely help here.

>> @@ -2181,8 +2166,8 @@ static inline bool should_continue_reclaim(struct
>> zone *zone,
>>          */
>>         pages_for_compaction = (2UL << sc->order);
>>         inactive_lru_pages = zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_FILE);
>> -       if (get_nr_swap_pages() > 0)
>> -               inactive_lru_pages += zone_page_state(zone,
>> NR_INACTIVE_ANON);
>> +       inactive_lru_pages += zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_ANON);
>> +
>>         if (sc->nr_reclaimed < pages_for_compaction &&
>>                         inactive_lru_pages > pages_for_compaction)
>
>
> Not sure this is a good idea, since the pages may not actually
> be reclaimable, and the inactive list will continue to be
> refilled indefinitely...
>
> If there was a counter of the number of volatile range pages
> in a zone, this would be easier.
>
> Of course, the overhead of keeping such a counter might be
> too high for what volatile ranges are designed for...

I started looking at something like this, but it runs into some
complexity when we're keeping volatility as a flag in the vma rather
then as a page state.

Also, even with a rough attempt at tracking of the number of volatile
pages, it seemed naively plugging that in for NR_INACTIVE_ANON here
was problematic, since we would scan for a shorter time, but but
wouldn't necessarily find the volatile pages in that time, causing us
not to always purge the volatile pages.

Part of me starts to wonder if a new LRU for volatile pages would be
needed to really be efficient here, but then I worry the moving of the
pages back and forth might be too expensive.

Thanks so much for the review and comments!
-john

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