On 05/06/2014 10:55 AM, Mel Gorman wrote:
On Fri, May 02, 2014 at 01:29:33PM -0700, David Rientjes wrote:
On Fri, 2 May 2014, Mel Gorman wrote:
The page locks I'm referring to is the lock_page() in __unmap_and_move()
that gets called for sync compaction after the migrate_pages() iteration
makes a few passes and unsuccessfully grabs it. This becomes a forced
migration since __unmap_and_move() returns -EAGAIN when the trylock fails.
Can that be fixed then instead of disabling it entirely?
We could return -EAGAIN when the trylock_page() fails for
MIGRATE_SYNC_LIGHT. It would become a forced migration but we ignore that
currently for MIGRATE_ASYNC, and I could extend it to be ignored for
MIGRATE_SYNC_LIGHT as well.
We have perf profiles from one workload in particular that shows
contention on i_mmap_mutex (anon isn't interesting since the vast majority
of memory on this workload [120GB on a 128GB machine] is has a gup pin and
doesn't get isolated because of 119d6d59dcc0 ("mm, compaction: avoid
isolating pinned pages")) between cpus all doing memory compaction trying
to fault thp memory.
Abort SYNC_LIGHT compaction if the mutex is contended.
Yeah, I have patches for that as well but we're waiting to see if they are
actually needed when sync compaction is disabled for thp. If we aren't
actually going to disable it entirely, then I can revive those patches if
the contention becomes such an issue.
That's one example that we've seen, but the fact remains that at times
sync compaction will iterate the entire 128GB machine and not allow an
order-9 page to be allocated and there's nothing to preempt it like the
need_resched() or lock contention checks that async compaction has.
Make compact_control->sync the same enum field and check for contention
on the async/sync_light case but leave it for sync if compacting via the
proc interface?
Ok, that certainly can be done, I wasn't sure you would be happy with such
a change.
I'm not super-keen as the success rates are already very poor for allocations
under pressure. It's something Vlastimil is working on so it may be possible
to get some of the success rates back. It has always been the case that
compaction should not severely impact overall performance as THP gains
must offset compaction. While I'm not happy to reduce the success rates
further I do not think we should leave a known performance impact on
128G machines wait on Vlastimil's series.
Vlastimil, what do you think?
I think before giving up due to lock contention, the "give up on
pageblock when I won't be able to free all of it anyway" should be
considered (as I've tried to explain in the yesterday reply, and I think
David also suggested that already?). Giving up due to lock contention
might for example mean that it will free half of the pageblock and then
give up, wasting the work already done.
I'm not sure there's so much of a difference between the new
compact_control->sync == MIGRATE_ASYNC and == MIGRATE_SYNC_LIGHT now,
though. Would it make sense to remove MIGRATE_SYNC_LIGHT entirely from
the page allocator, i.e. remove sync_migration entirely, and just retry
with a second call to compaction before failing instead?
Would it be possible if only khugepaged entered SYNC_LIGHT migration and
kswapd and direct THP allocations used only MIGRATE_ASYNC? That would
allow khugepaged to continue locking pages and buffers in a slow path
while still not allowing it to issue IO or wait on writeback. It would
also give a chance for Vlastimil's series to shake out a bit without him
having to reintroduce SYNC_LIGHT as part of that series.
I agree that khugepaged should be more persistent. Unlike page faults
and direct compactions, nothing is stalling on it right?
Also removing sync_migration completely would mean that nobody would try
to compact non-MOVABLE pageblocks. I think this might increase
fragmentation, as this is a mechanism that prevents non-MOVABLE
pageblocks being filled by MOVABLE pages by stealing, and then
non-MOVABLE allocations having to steal back from other MOVABLE
pageblocks...
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