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Date:   Fri, 15 May 2020 09:24:21 -0400
From:   Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc:     Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>, Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>,
        Roman Gushchin <guro@fb.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Yafang Shao <laoar.shao@gmail.com>,
        Linux MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
        Cgroups <cgroups@vger.kernel.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] memcg: expose root cgroup's memory.stat
Message-ID: <20200515132421.GC591266@cmpxchg.org>
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On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 10:29:55AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Sat 09-05-20 07:06:38, Shakeel Butt wrote:
> > On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 2:44 PM Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Fri, May 08, 2020 at 10:06:30AM -0700, Shakeel Butt wrote:
> > > > One way to measure the efficiency of memory reclaim is to look at the
> > > > ratio (pgscan+pfrefill)/pgsteal. However at the moment these stats are
> > > > not updated consistently at the system level and the ratio of these are
> > > > not very meaningful. The pgsteal and pgscan are updated for only global
> > > > reclaim while pgrefill gets updated for global as well as cgroup
> > > > reclaim.
> > > >
> > > > Please note that this difference is only for system level vmstats. The
> > > > cgroup stats returned by memory.stat are actually consistent. The
> > > > cgroup's pgsteal contains number of reclaimed pages for global as well
> > > > as cgroup reclaim. So, one way to get the system level stats is to get
> > > > these stats from root's memory.stat, so, expose memory.stat for the root
> > > > cgroup.
> > > >
> > > >       from Johannes Weiner:
> > > >       There are subtle differences between /proc/vmstat and
> > > >       memory.stat, and cgroup-aware code that wants to watch the full
> > > >       hierarchy currently has to know about these intricacies and
> > > >       translate semantics back and forth.
> 
> Can we have those subtle differences documented please?
> 
> > > >
> > > >       Generally having the fully recursive memory.stat at the root
> > > >       level could help a broader range of usecases.
> > >
> > > The changelog begs the question why we don't just "fix" the
> > > system-level stats. It may be useful to include the conclusions from
> > > that discussion, and why there is value in keeping the stats this way.
> > >
> > 
> > Right. Andrew, can you please add the following para to the changelog?
> > 
> > Why not fix the stats by including both the global and cgroup reclaim
> > activity instead of exposing root cgroup's memory.stat? The reason is
> > the benefit of having metrics exposing the activity that happens
> > purely due to machine capacity rather than localized activity that
> > happens due to the limits throughout the cgroup tree. Additionally
> > there are userspace tools like sysstat(sar) which reads these stats to
> > inform about the system level reclaim activity. So, we should not
> > break such use-cases.
> > 
> > > > Signed-off-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>
> > > > Suggested-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
> > >
> > > Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
> > 
> > Thanks a lot.
> 
> I was quite surprised that the patch is so simple TBH. For some reason
> I've still had memories that we do not account for root memcg (likely
> because mem_cgroup_is_root(memcg) bail out in the try_charge. But stats
> are slightly different here.

Yep, we skip the page_counter for root, but keep in mind that cgroup1
*does* have a root-level memory.stat, so (for the most part) we've
been keeping consumer stats for the root level the whole time.

> counters because they are not really all the same. E.g.
> - mem_cgroup_charge_statistics accounts for each memcg

Yep, that's heritage from cgroup1.

> - memcg_charge_kernel_stack relies on pages being associated with a
>   memcg and that in turn relies on __memcg_kmem_charge_page which bails
>   out on root memcg

You're right. It should only bypass the page_counter, but still set
page->mem_cgroup = root_mem_cgroup, just like user pages.

This counter also doesn't get exported on cgroup1, so it would indeed
be a new bug. It needs to be fixed before this patch here.

> - memcg_charge_slab (NR_SLAB*) skips over root memcg as well

Same thing with these two.