On Fri 27-01-17 01:13:18, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 08:44:55AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote: > > > > I'm convinced the current series is OK, only real life will tell us > > > > whether > > > > we missed something or not ;) > > > > > > I would like to extend the changelog of "jbd2: mark the transaction > > > context with the scope GFP_NOFS context". > > > > > > " > > > Please note that setups without journal do not suffer from potential > > > recursion problems and so they do not need the scope protection because > > > neither ->releasepage nor ->evict_inode (which are the only fs entry > > > points from the direct reclaim) can reenter a locked context which is > > > doing the allocation currently. > > > " > > > > Could you comment on this Ted, please? > > I guess.... so there still is one way this could screw us, and it's this > reason for GFP_NOFS: > > - to prevent from stack overflows during the reclaim because > the allocation is performed from a deep context already > > The writepages call stack can be pretty deep. (Especially if we're > using ext4 in no journal mode over, say, iSCSI.) > > How much stack space can get consumed by a reclaim?
./scripts/stackusage with allyesconfig says: ./mm/page_alloc.c:3745 __alloc_pages_nodemask 264 static ./mm/page_alloc.c:3531 __alloc_pages_slowpath 520 static ./mm/vmscan.c:2946 try_to_free_pages 216 static ./mm/vmscan.c:2753 do_try_to_free_pages 304 static ./mm/vmscan.c:2517 shrink_node 352 static ./mm/vmscan.c:2317 shrink_node_memcg 560 static ./mm/vmscan.c:1692 shrink_inactive_list 688 static ./mm/vmscan.c:908 shrink_page_list 608 static So this would be 3512 for the standard LRUs reclaim whether we have GFP_FS or not. shrink_page_list can recurse to releasepage but there is no NOFS protection there so it doesn't make much sense to check this path. So we are left with the slab shrinkers path ./mm/page_alloc.c:3745 __alloc_pages_nodemask 264 static ./mm/page_alloc.c:3531 __alloc_pages_slowpath 520 static ./mm/vmscan.c:2946 try_to_free_pages 216 static ./mm/vmscan.c:2753 do_try_to_free_pages 304 static ./mm/vmscan.c:2517 shrink_node 352 static ./mm/vmscan.c:427 shrink_slab 336 static ./fs/super.c:56 super_cache_scan 104 static << here we have the NOFS protection ./fs/dcache.c:1089 prune_dcache_sb 152 static ./fs/dcache.c:939 shrink_dentry_list 96 static ./fs/dcache.c:509 __dentry_kill 72 static ./fs/dcache.c:323 dentry_unlink_inode 64 static ./fs/inode.c:1527 iput 80 static ./fs/inode.c:532 evict 72 static This is where the fs specific callbacks play role and I am not sure which paths can pass through for ext4 in the nojournal mode and how much of the stack this can eat. But currently we are at +536 wrt. NOFS context. This is quite a lot but still much less (2632 vs. 3512) than the regular reclaim. So there is quite some stack space to eat... I am wondering whether we have to really treat nojournal mode any special just because of the stack usage? If this ever turn out to be a problem and with the vmapped stacks we have good chances to get a proper stack traces on a potential overflow we can add the scope API around the problematic code path with the explanation why it is needed. Does that make sense to you? Thanks! -- Michal Hocko SUSE Labs
