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Date:   Tue, 16 Feb 2021 13:53:12 -0800 (PST)
From:   David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
cc:     Eiichi Tsukata <eiichi.tsukata@nutanix.com>, corbet@lwn.net,
        mike.kravetz@oracle.com, mcgrof@kernel.org, keescook@chromium.org,
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        linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
        felipe.franciosi@nutanix.com
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] mm, oom: introduce vm.sacrifice_hugepage_on_oom
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On Tue, 16 Feb 2021, Michal Hocko wrote:

> > Hugepages can be preallocated to avoid unpredictable allocation latency.
> > If we run into 4k page shortage, the kernel can trigger OOM even though
> > there were free hugepages. When OOM is triggered by user address page
> > fault handler, we can use oom notifier to free hugepages in user space
> > but if it's triggered by memory allocation for kernel, there is no way
> > to synchronously handle it in user space.
> 
> Can you expand some more on what kind of problem do you see?
> Hugetlb pages are, by definition, a preallocated, unreclaimable and
> admin controlled pool of pages.

Small nit: true of non-surplus hugetlb pages.

> Under those conditions it is expected
> and required that the sizing would be done very carefully. Why is that a
> problem in your particular setup/scenario?
> 
> If the sizing is really done properly and then a random process can
> trigger OOM then this can lead to malfunctioning of those workloads
> which do depend on hugetlb pool, right? So isn't this a kinda DoS
> scenario?
> 
> > This patch introduces a new sysctl vm.sacrifice_hugepage_on_oom. If
> > enabled, it first tries to free a hugepage if available before invoking
> > the oom-killer. The default value is disabled not to change the current
> > behavior.
> 
> Why is this interface not hugepage size aware? It is quite different to
> release a GB huge page or 2MB one. Or is it expected to release the
> smallest one? To the implementation...
> 
> [...]
> > +static int sacrifice_hugepage(void)
> > +{
> > +	int ret;
> > +
> > +	spin_lock(&hugetlb_lock);
> > +	ret = free_pool_huge_page(&default_hstate, &node_states[N_MEMORY], 0);
> 
> ... no it is going to release the default huge page. This will be 2MB in
> most cases but this is not given.
> 
> Unless I am mistaken this will free up also reserved hugetlb pages. This
> would mean that a page fault would SIGBUS which is very likely not
> something we want to do right? You also want to use oom nodemask rather
> than a full one.
> 
> Overall, I am not really happy about this feature even when above is
> fixed, but let's hear more the actual problem first.

Shouldn't this behavior be possible as an oomd plugin instead, perhaps 
triggered by psi?  I'm not sure if oomd is intended only to kill something 
(oomkilld? lol) or if it can be made to do sysadmin level behavior, such 
as shrinking the hugetlb pool, to solve the oom condition.

If so, it seems like we want to do this at the absolute last minute.  In 
other words, reclaim has failed to free memory by other means so we would 
like to shrink the hugetlb pool.  (It's the reason why it's implemented as 
a predecessor to oom as opposed to part of reclaim in general.)

Do we have the ability to suppress the oom killer until oomd has a chance 
to react in this scenario?