Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753969Ab2KLVgI (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:36:08 -0500 Received: from mail-ea0-f202.google.com ([209.85.215.202]:57190 "EHLO mail-ea0-f202.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753093Ab2KLVgC (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:36:02 -0500 From: Sonny Rao To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Cc: Fengguang Wu , Peter Zijlstra , Andrew Morton , Michal Hocko , linux-mm@kvack.org, Mandeep Singh Baines , Johannes Weiner , Olof Johansson , Will Drewry , Kees Cook , Aaron Durbin , stable@vger.kernel.org, Sonny Rao , Puneet Kumar Subject: [PATCHv4] mm: Fix calculation of dirtyable memory Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:35:46 -0800 Message-Id: <1352756146-11837-1-git-send-email-sonnyrao@chromium.org> X-Mailer: git-send-email 1.7.7.3 In-Reply-To: <20121112203221.GB4511@redhat.com> References: <20121112203221.GB4511@redhat.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3355 Lines: 86 The system uses global_dirtyable_memory() to calculate number of dirtyable pages/pages that can be allocated to the page cache. A bug causes an underflow thus making the page count look like a big unsigned number. This in turn confuses the dirty writeback throttling to aggressively write back pages as they become dirty (usually 1 page at a time). This generally only affects systems with highmem because the underflowed count gets subtracted from the global count of dirtyable memory. The problem was introduced with v3.2-4896-gab8fabd Fix is to ensure we don't get an underflowed total of either highmem or global dirtyable memory. Signed-off-by: Sonny Rao Signed-off-by: Puneet Kumar Acked-by: Johannes Weiner CC: stable@vger.kernel.org --- v2: added apkm's suggestion to make the highmem calculation better v3: added Fengguang Wu's suggestions fix zone_dirtyable_memory() and (offlist mail) to use max() in global_dirtyable_memory() v4: Added suggestions to description clarifying the role of highmem and the commit which originally caused the problem mm/page-writeback.c | 25 ++++++++++++++++++++----- 1 files changed, 20 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/mm/page-writeback.c b/mm/page-writeback.c index 830893b..f9efbe8 100644 --- a/mm/page-writeback.c +++ b/mm/page-writeback.c @@ -201,6 +201,18 @@ static unsigned long highmem_dirtyable_memory(unsigned long total) zone_reclaimable_pages(z) - z->dirty_balance_reserve; } /* + * Unreclaimable memory (kernel memory or anonymous memory + * without swap) can bring down the dirtyable pages below + * the zone's dirty balance reserve and the above calculation + * will underflow. However we still want to add in nodes + * which are below threshold (negative values) to get a more + * accurate calculation but make sure that the total never + * underflows. + */ + if ((long)x < 0) + x = 0; + + /* * Make sure that the number of highmem pages is never larger * than the number of the total dirtyable memory. This can only * occur in very strange VM situations but we want to make sure @@ -222,8 +234,8 @@ static unsigned long global_dirtyable_memory(void) { unsigned long x; - x = global_page_state(NR_FREE_PAGES) + global_reclaimable_pages() - - dirty_balance_reserve; + x = global_page_state(NR_FREE_PAGES) + global_reclaimable_pages(); + x -= max(x, dirty_balance_reserve); if (!vm_highmem_is_dirtyable) x -= highmem_dirtyable_memory(x); @@ -290,9 +302,12 @@ static unsigned long zone_dirtyable_memory(struct zone *zone) * highmem zone can hold its share of dirty pages, so we don't * care about vm_highmem_is_dirtyable here. */ - return zone_page_state(zone, NR_FREE_PAGES) + - zone_reclaimable_pages(zone) - - zone->dirty_balance_reserve; + unsigned long nr_pages = zone_page_state(zone, NR_FREE_PAGES) + + zone_reclaimable_pages(zone); + + /* don't allow this to underflow */ + nr_pages -= max(nr_pages, zone->dirty_balance_reserve); + return nr_pages; } /** -- 1.7.7.3 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/