Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2016 03:53:20 -0800
From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
To: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Donald Buczek <buczek@molgen.mpg.de>,
        Paul Menzel <pmenzel@molgen.mpg.de>, dvteam@molgen.mpg.de,
        linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Subject: Re: INFO: rcu_sched detected stalls on CPUs/tasks with `kswapd` and
 `mem_cgroup_shrink_node`
Reply-To: paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com
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 <109d5128-f3a4-4b6e-db17-7a1fcb953500@molgen.mpg.de>
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On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 12:09:44PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> [CCing Paul]
> 
> On Wed 30-11-16 11:28:34, Donald Buczek wrote:
> [...]
> > shrink_active_list gets and releases the spinlock and calls cond_resched().
> > This should give other tasks a chance to run. Just as an experiment, I'm
> > trying
> > 
> > --- a/mm/vmscan.c
> > +++ b/mm/vmscan.c
> > @@ -1921,7 +1921,7 @@ static void shrink_active_list(unsigned long
> > nr_to_scan,
> >         spin_unlock_irq(&pgdat->lru_lock);
> > 
> >         while (!list_empty(&l_hold)) {
> > -               cond_resched();
> > +               cond_resched_rcu_qs();
> >                 page = lru_to_page(&l_hold);
> >                 list_del(&page->lru);
> > 
> > and didn't hit a rcu_sched warning for >21 hours uptime now. We'll see.
> 
> This is really interesting! Is it possible that the RCU stall detector
> is somehow confused?

No, it is not confused.  Again, cond_resched() is not a quiescent
state unless it does a context switch.  Therefore, if the task running
in that loop was the only runnable task on its CPU, cond_resched()
would -never- provide RCU with a quiescent state.

In contrast, cond_resched_rcu_qs() unconditionally provides RCU
with a quiescent state (hence the _rcu_qs in its name), regardless
of whether or not a context switch happens.

It is therefore expected behavior that this change might prevent
RCU CPU stall warnings.

							Thanx, Paul

> > Is preemption disabled for another reason?
> 
> I do not think so. I will have to double check the code but this is a
> standard sleepable context. Just wondering what is the PREEMPT
> configuration here?
> -- 
> Michal Hocko
> SUSE Labs
>