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Date:   Fri, 22 Jun 2018 14:57:10 -0400 (EDT)
From:   Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
cc:     jing xia <jing.xia.mail@gmail.com>,
        Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>, agk@redhat.com,
        dm-devel@redhat.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-mm@kvack.org
Subject: Re: dm bufio: Reduce dm_bufio_lock contention
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On Fri, 22 Jun 2018, Michal Hocko wrote:

> On Fri 22-06-18 08:52:09, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, 22 Jun 2018, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri 22-06-18 11:01:51, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > > On Thu 21-06-18 21:17:24, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> > > [...]
> > > > > What about this patch? If __GFP_NORETRY and __GFP_FS is not set (i.e. the 
> > > > > request comes from a block device driver or a filesystem), we should not 
> > > > > sleep.
> > > > 
> > > > Why? How are you going to audit all the callers that the behavior makes
> > > > sense and moreover how are you going to ensure that future usage will
> > > > still make sense. The more subtle side effects gfp flags have the harder
> > > > they are to maintain.
> > > 
> > > So just as an excercise. Try to explain the above semantic to users. We
> > > currently have the following.
> > > 
> > >  * __GFP_NORETRY: The VM implementation will try only very lightweight
> > >  *   memory direct reclaim to get some memory under memory pressure (thus
> > >  *   it can sleep). It will avoid disruptive actions like OOM killer. The
> > >  *   caller must handle the failure which is quite likely to happen under
> > >  *   heavy memory pressure. The flag is suitable when failure can easily be
> > >  *   handled at small cost, such as reduced throughput
> > > 
> > >  * __GFP_FS can call down to the low-level FS. Clearing the flag avoids the
> > >  *   allocator recursing into the filesystem which might already be holding
> > >  *   locks.
> > > 
> > > So how are you going to explain gfp & (__GFP_NORETRY | ~__GFP_FS)? What
> > > is the actual semantic without explaining the whole reclaim or force
> > > users to look into the code to understand that? What about GFP_NOIO |
> > > __GFP_NORETRY? What does it mean to that "should not sleep". Do all
> > > shrinkers have to follow that as well?
> > 
> > My reasoning was that there is broken code that uses __GFP_NORETRY and 
> > assumes that it can't fail - so conditioning the change on !__GFP_FS would 
> > minimize the diruption to the broken code.
> > 
> > Anyway - if you want to test only on __GFP_NORETRY (and fix those 16 
> > broken cases that assume that __GFP_NORETRY can't fail), I'm OK with that.
> 
> As I've already said, this is a subtle change which is really hard to
> reason about. Throttling on congestion has its meaning and reason. Look
> at why we are doing that in the first place. You cannot simply say this

So - explain why is throttling needed. You support throttling, I don't, so 
you have to explain it :)

> is ok based on your specific usecase. We do have means to achieve that.
> It is explicit and thus it will be applied only where it makes sense.
> You keep repeating that implicit behavior change for everybody is
> better.

I don't want to change it for everybody. I want to change it for block 
device drivers. I don't care what you do with non-block drivers.

> I guess we will not agree on that part. I consider it a hack
> rather than a systematic solution. I can easily imagine that we just
> find out other call sites that would cause over reclaim or similar

If a __GFP_NORETRY allocation does overreclaim - it could be fixed by 
returning NULL instead of doing overreclaim. The specification says that 
callers must handle failure of __GFP_NORETRY allocations.

So yes - if you think that just skipping throttling on __GFP_NORETRY could 
cause excessive CPU consumption trying to reclaim unreclaimable pages or 
something like that - then you can add more points where the __GFP_NORETRY 
is failed with NULL to avoid the excessive CPU consumption.

> problems because they are not throttled on too many dirty pages due to
> congested storage. What are we going to then? Add another magic gfp
> flag? Really, try to not add even more subtle side effects for gfp
> flags. We _do_ have ways to accomplish what your particular usecase
> requires.
> 
> -- 
> Michal Hocko
> SUSE Labs

Mikulas