linux/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt

815 lines
30 KiB

mm: allow compaction of unevictable pages Currently, pages which are marked as unevictable are protected from compaction, but not from other types of migration. The POSIX real time extension explicitly states that mlock() will prevent a major page fault, but the spirit of this is that mlock() should give a process the ability to control sources of latency, including minor page faults. However, the mlock manpage only explicitly says that a locked page will not be written to swap and this can cause some confusion. The compaction code today does not give a developer who wants to avoid swap but wants to have large contiguous areas available any method to achieve this state. This patch introduces a sysctl for controlling compaction behavior with respect to the unevictable lru. Users who demand no page faults after a page is present can set compact_unevictable_allowed to 0 and users who need the large contiguous areas can enable compaction on locked memory by leaving the default value of 1. To illustrate this problem I wrote a quick test program that mmaps a large number of 1MB files filled with random data. These maps are created locked and read only. Then every other mmap is unmapped and I attempt to allocate huge pages to the static huge page pool. When the compact_unevictable_allowed sysctl is 0, I cannot allocate hugepages after fragmenting memory. When the value is set to 1, allocations succeed. Signed-off-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@akamai.com> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-04-15 16:13:20 -07:00
HWPOISON: The high level memory error handler in the VM v7 Add the high level memory handler that poisons pages that got corrupted by hardware (typically by a two bit flip in a DIMM or a cache) on the Linux level. The goal is to prevent everyone from accessing these pages in the future. This done at the VM level by marking a page hwpoisoned and doing the appropriate action based on the type of page it is. The code that does this is portable and lives in mm/memory-failure.c To quote the overview comment: High level machine check handler. Handles pages reported by the hardware as being corrupted usually due to a 2bit ECC memory or cache failure. This focuses on pages detected as corrupted in the background. When the current CPU tries to consume corruption the currently running process can just be killed directly instead. This implies that if the error cannot be handled for some reason it's safe to just ignore it because no corruption has been consumed yet. Instead when that happens another machine check will happen. Handles page cache pages in various states. The tricky part here is that we can access any page asynchronous to other VM users, because memory failures could happen anytime and anywhere, possibly violating some of their assumptions. This is why this code has to be extremely careful. Generally it tries to use normal locking rules, as in get the standard locks, even if that means the error handling takes potentially a long time. Some of the operations here are somewhat inefficient and have non linear algorithmic complexity, because the data structures have not been optimized for this case. This is in particular the case for the mapping from a vma to a process. Since this case is expected to be rare we hope we can get away with this. There are in principle two strategies to kill processes on poison: - just unmap the data and wait for an actual reference before killing - kill as soon as corruption is detected. Both have advantages and disadvantages and should be used in different situations. Right now both are implemented and can be switched with a new sysctl vm.memory_failure_early_kill The default is early kill. The patch does some rmap data structure walking on its own to collect processes to kill. This is unusual because normally all rmap data structure knowledge is in rmap.c only. I put it here for now to keep everything together and rmap knowledge has been seeping out anyways Includes contributions from Johannes Weiner, Chris Mason, Fengguang Wu, Nick Piggin (who did a lot of great work) and others. Cc: npiggin@suse.de Cc: riel@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Hidehiro Kawai <hidehiro.kawai.ez@hitachi.com>
2009-09-16 11:50:15 +02:00
[PATCH] zone_reclaim: dynamic slab reclaim Currently one can enable slab reclaim by setting an explicit option in /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode. Slab reclaim is then used as a final option if the freeing of unmapped file backed pages is not enough to free enough pages to allow a local allocation. However, that means that the slab can grow excessively and that most memory of a node may be used by slabs. We have had a case where a machine with 46GB of memory was using 40-42GB for slab. Zone reclaim was effective in dealing with pagecache pages. However, slab reclaim was only done during global reclaim (which is a bit rare on NUMA systems). This patch implements slab reclaim during zone reclaim. Zone reclaim occurs if there is a danger of an off node allocation. At that point we 1. Shrink the per node page cache if the number of pagecache pages is more than min_unmapped_ratio percent of pages in a zone. 2. Shrink the slab cache if the number of the nodes reclaimable slab pages (patch depends on earlier one that implements that counter) are more than min_slab_ratio (a new /proc/sys/vm tunable). The shrinking of the slab cache is a bit problematic since it is not node specific. So we simply calculate what point in the slab we want to reach (current per node slab use minus the number of pages that neeed to be allocated) and then repeately run the global reclaim until that is unsuccessful or we have reached the limit. I hope we will have zone based slab reclaim at some point which will make that easier. The default for the min_slab_ratio is 5% Also remove the slab option from /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode. [akpm@osdl.org: cleanups] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-25 23:31:52 -07:00
mm: limit growth of 3% hardcoded other user reserve Add user_reserve_kbytes knob. Limit the growth of the memory reserved for other user processes to min(3% current process size, user_reserve_pages). Only about 8MB is necessary to enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred MB are required even when overcommit is disabled. user_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free pages, 128MB) I arrived at 128MB by taking the max VSZ of sshd, login, bash, and top ... then adding the RSS of each. This only affects OVERCOMMIT_NEVER mode. Background 1. user reserve __vm_enough_memory reserves a hardcoded 3% of the current process size for other applications when overcommit is disabled. This was done so that a user could recover if they launched a memory hogging process. Without the reserve, a user would easily run into a message such as: bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory 2. admin reserve Additionally, a hardcoded 3% of free memory is reserved for root in both overcommit 'guess' and 'never' modes. This was intended to prevent a scenario where root-cant-log-in and perform recovery operations. Note that this reserve shrinks, and doesn't guarantee a useful reserve. Motivation The two hardcoded memory reserves should be updated to account for current memory sizes. Also, the admin reserve would be more useful if it didn't shrink too much. When the current code was originally written, 1GB was considered "enterprise". Now the 3% reserve can grow to multiple GB on large memory systems, and it only needs to be a few hundred MB at most to enable a user or admin to recover a system with an unwanted memory hogging process. I've found that reducing these reserves is especially beneficial for a specific type of application load: * single application system * one or few processes (e.g. one per core) * allocating all available memory * not initializing every page immediately * long running I've run scientific clusters with this sort of load. A long running job sometimes failed many hours (weeks of CPU time) into a calculation. They weren't initializing all of their memory immediately, and they weren't using calloc, so I put systems into overcommit 'never' mode. These clusters run diskless and have no swap. However, with the current reserves, a user wishing to allocate as much memory as possible to one process may be prevented from using, for example, almost 2GB out of 32GB. The effect is less, but still significant when a user starts a job with one process per core. I have repeatedly seen a set of processes requesting the same amount of memory fail because one of them could not allocate the amount of memory a user would expect to be able to allocate. For example, Message Passing Interfce (MPI) processes, one per core. And it is similar for other parallel programming frameworks. Changing this reserve code will make the overcommit never mode more useful by allowing applications to allocate nearly all of the available memory. Also, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Risks * "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" The downside of the first patch-- which creates a tunable user reserve that is only used in overcommit 'never' mode--is that an admin can set it so low that a user may not be able to kill their process, even if they already have a shell prompt. Of course, a user can get in the same predicament with the current 3% reserve--they just have to launch processes until 3% becomes negligible. * root-cant-log-in problem The second patch, adding the tunable rootuser_reserve_pages, allows the admin to shoot themselves in the foot by setting it too small. They can easily get the system into a state where root-can't-log-in. However, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Alternatives * Memory cgroups provide a more flexible way to limit application memory. Not everyone wants to set up cgroups or deal with their overhead. * We could create a fourth overcommit mode which provides smaller reserves. The size of useful reserves may be drastically different depending on the whether the system is embedded or enterprise. * Force users to initialize all of their memory or use calloc. Some users don't want/expect the system to overcommit when they malloc. Overcommit 'never' mode is for this scenario, and it should work well. The new user and admin reserve tunables are simple to use, with low overhead compared to cgroups. The patches preserve current behavior where 3% of memory is less than 128MB, except that the admin reserve doesn't shrink to an unusable size under pressure. The code allows admins to tune for embedded and enterprise usage. FAQ * How is the root-cant-login problem addressed? What happens if admin_reserve_pages is set to 0? Root is free to shoot themselves in the foot by setting admin_reserve_kbytes too low. On x86_64, the minimum useful reserve is: 8MB for overcommit 'guess' 128MB for overcommit 'never' admin_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free memory, 8MB) So, anyone switching to 'never' mode needs to adjust admin_reserve_pages. * How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve? A user or the admin needs enough memory to login and perform recovery operations, which includes, at a minimum: sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.) For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS) because we only need enough memory to handle what the recovery programs will typically use. On x86_64 this is about 8MB. For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ) and add the sum of their RSS. We use VSZ instead of RSS because mode forces us to ensure we can fulfill all of the requested memory allocations-- even if the programs only use a fraction of what they ask for. On x86_64 this is about 128MB. When swap is enabled, reserves are useful even when they are as small as 10MB, regardless of overcommit mode. When both swap and overcommit are disabled, then the admin should tune the reserves higher to be absolutley safe. Over 230MB each was safest in my testing. * What happens if user_reserve_pages is set to 0? Note, this only affects overcomitt 'never' mode. Then a user will be able to allocate all available memory minus admin_reserve_kbytes. However, they will easily see a message such as: "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" And they won't be able to recover/kill their application. The admin should be able to recover the system if admin_reserve_kbytes is set appropriately. * What's the difference between overcommit 'guess' and 'never'? "Guess" allows an allocation if there are enough free + reclaimable pages. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root. "Never" allows an allocation if there is enough swap + a configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root, like "Guess" mode. It also has a hardcoded 3% of the current process size reserved for additional applications. * Why is overcommit 'guess' not suitable even when an app eventually writes to every page? It takes free pages, file pages, available swap pages, reclaimable slab pages into consideration. In other words, these are all pages available, then why isn't overcommit suitable? Because it only looks at the present state of the system. It does not take into account the memory that other applications have malloced, but haven't initialized yet. It overcommits the system. Test Summary There was little change in behavior in the default overcommit 'guess' mode with swap enabled before and after the patch. This was expected. Systems run most predictably (i.e. no oom kills) in overcommit 'never' mode with swap enabled. This also allowed the most memory to be allocated to a user application. Overcommit 'guess' mode without swap is a bad idea. It is easy to crash the system. None of the other tested combinations crashed. This matches my experience on the Roadrunner supercomputer. Without the tunable user reserve, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap does not allow the admin to recover, although the admin can. With the new tunable reserves, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap can be configured to: 1. maximize user-allocatable memory, running close to the edge of recoverability 2. maximize recoverability, sacrificing allocatable memory to ensure that a user cannot take down a system Test Description Fedora 18 VM - 4 x86_64 cores, 5725MB RAM, 4GB Swap System is booted into multiuser console mode, with unnecessary services turned off. Caches were dropped before each test. Hogs are user memtester processes that attempt to allocate all free memory as reported by /proc/meminfo In overcommit 'never' mode, memory_ratio=100 Test Results 3.9.0-rc1-mm1 Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5432/5432 no yes yes guess yes 4 5444/5444 1 yes yes guess no 1 5302/5449 no yes yes guess no 4 - crash no no never yes 1 5460/5460 1 yes yes never yes 4 5460/5460 1 yes yes never no 1 5218/5432 no no yes never no 4 5203/5448 no no yes 3.9.0-rc1-mm1-tunablereserves User and Admin Recovery show their respective reserves, if applicable. Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5419/5419 no - yes 8MB yes guess yes 4 5436/5436 1 - yes 8MB yes guess no 1 5440/5440 * - yes 8MB yes guess no 4 - crash - no 8MB no * process would successfully mlock, then the oom killer would pick it never yes 1 5446/5446 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never yes 4 5456/5456 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never no 1 5387/5429 no 128MB no 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5359/5448 no 10MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 0MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5332/5428 no 0MB no 50MB yes never no 1 5293/5429 no 0MB no 90MB yes never no 1 5001/5427 no 230MB yes 338MB yes never no 4* 4998/5424 no 230MB yes 338MB yes * more memtesters were launched, able to allocate approximately another 100MB Future Work - Test larger memory systems. - Test an embedded image. - Test other architectures. - Time malloc microbenchmarks. - Would it be useful to be able to set overcommit policy for each memory cgroup? - Some lines are slightly above 80 chars. Perhaps define a macro to convert between pages and kb? Other places in the kernel do this. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_user_reserve() static] Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker <agshew@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-04-29 15:08:10 -07:00
mm: allow compaction of unevictable pages Currently, pages which are marked as unevictable are protected from compaction, but not from other types of migration. The POSIX real time extension explicitly states that mlock() will prevent a major page fault, but the spirit of this is that mlock() should give a process the ability to control sources of latency, including minor page faults. However, the mlock manpage only explicitly says that a locked page will not be written to swap and this can cause some confusion. The compaction code today does not give a developer who wants to avoid swap but wants to have large contiguous areas available any method to achieve this state. This patch introduces a sysctl for controlling compaction behavior with respect to the unevictable lru. Users who demand no page faults after a page is present can set compact_unevictable_allowed to 0 and users who need the large contiguous areas can enable compaction on locked memory by leaving the default value of 1. To illustrate this problem I wrote a quick test program that mmaps a large number of 1MB files filled with random data. These maps are created locked and read only. Then every other mmap is unmapped and I attempt to allocate huge pages to the static huge page pool. When the compact_unevictable_allowed sysctl is 0, I cannot allocate hugepages after fragmenting memory. When the value is set to 1, allocations succeed. Signed-off-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@akamai.com> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-04-15 16:13:20 -07:00
mm: prevent divide error for small values of vm_dirty_bytes Avoid setting less than two pages for vm_dirty_bytes: this is necessary to avoid potential division by 0 (like the following) in get_dirty_limits(). [ 49.951610] divide error: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP [ 49.952195] last sysfs file: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/uevent [ 49.952195] CPU 1 [ 49.952195] Modules linked in: pcspkr [ 49.952195] Pid: 3064, comm: dd Not tainted 2.6.30-rc3 #1 [ 49.952195] RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff802d39a9>] [<ffffffff802d39a9>] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0 [ 49.952195] RSP: 0018:ffff88001de03a98 EFLAGS: 00010202 [ 49.952195] RAX: 00000000000000c0 RBX: ffff88001de03b80 RCX: 28f5c28f5c28f5c3 [ 49.952195] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 00000000000000c0 RDI: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] RBP: ffff88001de03ae8 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] R10: ffff88001ddda9a0 R11: 0000000000000001 R12: 0000000000000001 [ 49.952195] R13: ffff88001fbc8218 R14: ffff88001de03b70 R15: ffff88001de03b78 [ 49.952195] FS: 00007fe9a435b6f0(0000) GS:ffff8800025d9000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 49.952195] CR2: 00007fe9a39ab000 CR3: 000000001de38000 CR4: 00000000000006e0 [ 49.952195] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [ 49.952195] Process dd (pid: 3064, threadinfo ffff88001de02000, task ffff88001ddda250) [ 49.952195] Stack: [ 49.952195] ffff88001fa0de00 ffff88001f2dbd70 ffff88001f9fe800 000080b900000000 [ 49.952195] 00000000000000c0 ffff8800027a6100 0000000000000400 ffff88001fbc8218 [ 49.952195] 0000000000000000 0000000000000600 ffff88001de03bb8 ffffffff802d3ed7 [ 49.952195] Call Trace: [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802d3ed7>] balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited_nr+0x1d7/0x3f0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80368f8e>] ? ext3_writeback_write_end+0x9e/0x120 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cc7df>] generic_file_buffered_write+0x12f/0x330 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cce8d>] __generic_file_aio_write_nolock+0x26d/0x460 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cda32>] ? generic_file_aio_write+0x52/0xd0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cda49>] generic_file_aio_write+0x69/0xd0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80365fa6>] ext3_file_write+0x26/0xc0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff803034d1>] do_sync_write+0xf1/0x140 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80290d1a>] ? get_lock_stats+0x2a/0x60 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80280730>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff8030411b>] vfs_write+0xcb/0x190 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff803042d0>] sys_write+0x50/0x90 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff8022ff6b>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b [ 49.952195] Code: 00 00 00 2b 05 09 1c 17 01 48 89 c6 49 0f af f4 48 c1 ee 02 48 89 f0 48 f7 e1 48 89 d6 31 d2 48 c1 ee 02 48 0f af 75 d0 48 89 f0 <48> f7 f7 41 8b 95 ac 01 00 00 48 89 c7 49 0f af d4 48 c1 ea 02 [ 49.952195] RIP [<ffffffff802d39a9>] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0 [ 49.952195] RSP <ffff88001de03a98> [ 50.096523] ---[ end trace 008d7aa02f244d7b ]--- Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <righi.andrea@gmail.com> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-30 15:08:57 -07:00
2014-04-03 14:48:19 -07:00
2014-04-03 14:48:19 -07:00
2014-04-03 14:48:19 -07:00
2014-04-03 14:48:19 -07:00
HWPOISON: The high level memory error handler in the VM v7 Add the high level memory handler that poisons pages that got corrupted by hardware (typically by a two bit flip in a DIMM or a cache) on the Linux level. The goal is to prevent everyone from accessing these pages in the future. This done at the VM level by marking a page hwpoisoned and doing the appropriate action based on the type of page it is. The code that does this is portable and lives in mm/memory-failure.c To quote the overview comment: High level machine check handler. Handles pages reported by the hardware as being corrupted usually due to a 2bit ECC memory or cache failure. This focuses on pages detected as corrupted in the background. When the current CPU tries to consume corruption the currently running process can just be killed directly instead. This implies that if the error cannot be handled for some reason it's safe to just ignore it because no corruption has been consumed yet. Instead when that happens another machine check will happen. Handles page cache pages in various states. The tricky part here is that we can access any page asynchronous to other VM users, because memory failures could happen anytime and anywhere, possibly violating some of their assumptions. This is why this code has to be extremely careful. Generally it tries to use normal locking rules, as in get the standard locks, even if that means the error handling takes potentially a long time. Some of the operations here are somewhat inefficient and have non linear algorithmic complexity, because the data structures have not been optimized for this case. This is in particular the case for the mapping from a vma to a process. Since this case is expected to be rare we hope we can get away with this. There are in principle two strategies to kill processes on poison: - just unmap the data and wait for an actual reference before killing - kill as soon as corruption is detected. Both have advantages and disadvantages and should be used in different situations. Right now both are implemented and can be switched with a new sysctl vm.memory_failure_early_kill The default is early kill. The patch does some rmap data structure walking on its own to collect processes to kill. This is unusual because normally all rmap data structure knowledge is in rmap.c only. I put it here for now to keep everything together and rmap knowledge has been seeping out anyways Includes contributions from Johannes Weiner, Chris Mason, Fengguang Wu, Nick Piggin (who did a lot of great work) and others. Cc: npiggin@suse.de Cc: riel@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Hidehiro Kawai <hidehiro.kawai.ez@hitachi.com>
2009-09-16 11:50:15 +02:00
[PATCH] zone_reclaim: dynamic slab reclaim Currently one can enable slab reclaim by setting an explicit option in /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode. Slab reclaim is then used as a final option if the freeing of unmapped file backed pages is not enough to free enough pages to allow a local allocation. However, that means that the slab can grow excessively and that most memory of a node may be used by slabs. We have had a case where a machine with 46GB of memory was using 40-42GB for slab. Zone reclaim was effective in dealing with pagecache pages. However, slab reclaim was only done during global reclaim (which is a bit rare on NUMA systems). This patch implements slab reclaim during zone reclaim. Zone reclaim occurs if there is a danger of an off node allocation. At that point we 1. Shrink the per node page cache if the number of pagecache pages is more than min_unmapped_ratio percent of pages in a zone. 2. Shrink the slab cache if the number of the nodes reclaimable slab pages (patch depends on earlier one that implements that counter) are more than min_slab_ratio (a new /proc/sys/vm tunable). The shrinking of the slab cache is a bit problematic since it is not node specific. So we simply calculate what point in the slab we want to reach (current per node slab use minus the number of pages that neeed to be allocated) and then repeately run the global reclaim until that is unsuccessful or we have reached the limit. I hope we will have zone based slab reclaim at some point which will make that easier. The default for the min_slab_ratio is 5% Also remove the slab option from /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode. [akpm@osdl.org: cleanups] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-25 23:31:52 -07:00
vmscan: properly account for the number of page cache pages zone_reclaim() can reclaim A bug was brought to my attention against a distro kernel but it affects mainline and I believe problems like this have been reported in various guises on the mailing lists although I don't have specific examples at the moment. The reported problem was that malloc() stalled for a long time (minutes in some cases) if a large tmpfs mount was occupying a large percentage of memory overall. The pages did not get cleaned or reclaimed by zone_reclaim() because the zone_reclaim_mode was unsuitable, but the lists are uselessly scanned frequencly making the CPU spin at near 100%. This patchset intends to address that bug and bring the behaviour of zone_reclaim() more in line with expectations which were noticed during investigation. It is based on top of mmotm and takes advantage of Kosaki's work with respect to zone_reclaim(). Patch 1 fixes the heuristics that zone_reclaim() uses to determine if the scan should go ahead. The broken heuristic is what was causing the malloc() stall as it uselessly scanned the LRU constantly. Currently, zone_reclaim is assuming zone_reclaim_mode is 1 and historically it could not deal with tmpfs pages at all. This fixes up the heuristic so that an unnecessary scan is more likely to be correctly avoided. Patch 2 notes that zone_reclaim() returning a failure automatically means the zone is marked full. This is not always true. It could have failed because the GFP mask or zone_reclaim_mode were unsuitable. Patch 3 introduces a counter zreclaim_failed that will increment each time the zone_reclaim scan-avoidance heuristics fail. If that counter is rapidly increasing, then zone_reclaim_mode should be set to 0 as a temporarily resolution and a bug reported because the scan-avoidance heuristic is still broken. This patch: On NUMA machines, the administrator can configure zone_reclaim_mode that is a more targetted form of direct reclaim. On machines with large NUMA distances for example, a zone_reclaim_mode defaults to 1 meaning that clean unmapped pages will be reclaimed if the zone watermarks are not being met. There is a heuristic that determines if the scan is worthwhile but the problem is that the heuristic is not being properly applied and is basically assuming zone_reclaim_mode is 1 if it is enabled. The lack of proper detection can manfiest as high CPU usage as the LRU list is scanned uselessly. Historically, once enabled it was depending on NR_FILE_PAGES which may include swapcache pages that the reclaim_mode cannot deal with. Patch vmscan-change-the-number-of-the-unmapped-files-in-zone-reclaim.patch by Kosaki Motohiro noted that zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_PAGES) included pages that were not file-backed such as swapcache and made a calculation based on the inactive, active and mapped files. This is far superior when zone_reclaim==1 but if RECLAIM_SWAP is set, then NR_FILE_PAGES is a reasonable starting figure. This patch alters how zone_reclaim() works out how many pages it might be able to reclaim given the current reclaim_mode. If RECLAIM_SWAP is set in the reclaim_mode it will either consider NR_FILE_PAGES as potential candidates or else use NR_{IN}ACTIVE}_PAGES-NR_FILE_MAPPED to discount swapcache and other non-file-backed pages. If RECLAIM_WRITE is not set, then NR_FILE_DIRTY number of pages are not candidates. If RECLAIM_SWAP is not set, then NR_FILE_MAPPED are not. [kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: Estimate unmapped pages minus tmpfs pages] [fengguang.wu@intel.com: Fix underflow problem in Kosaki's estimate] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-06-16 15:33:20 -07:00
change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6. This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable. Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based. [Default Order] The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically. [Node-based Order] This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones (ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist. current 2.6.21 kernel uses this. Pros. * A user can expect local memory as much as possible. Cons. * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL. Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. [Zone-based order] This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist. Pros. * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted. Cons. * memory locality may not be best. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd. command: %echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order. command: %echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order. Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes. [Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-15 23:38:01 -07:00
change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6. This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable. Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based. [Default Order] The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically. [Node-based Order] This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones (ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist. current 2.6.21 kernel uses this. Pros. * A user can expect local memory as much as possible. Cons. * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL. Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. [Zone-based order] This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist. Pros. * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted. Cons. * memory locality may not be best. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd. command: %echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order. command: %echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order. Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes. [Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-15 23:38:01 -07:00
change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6. This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable. Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based. [Default Order] The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically. [Node-based Order] This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones (ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist. current 2.6.21 kernel uses this. Pros. * A user can expect local memory as much as possible. Cons. * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL. Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. [Zone-based order] This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist. Pros. * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted. Cons. * memory locality may not be best. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd. command: %echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order. command: %echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order. Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes. [Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-15 23:38:01 -07:00
change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6. This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable. Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based. [Default Order] The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically. [Node-based Order] This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones (ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist. current 2.6.21 kernel uses this. Pros. * A user can expect local memory as much as possible. Cons. * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL. Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. [Zone-based order] This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist. Pros. * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted. Cons. * memory locality may not be best. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd. command: %echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order. command: %echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order. Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes. [Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-15 23:38:01 -07:00
change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6. This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable. Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based. [Default Order] The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically. [Node-based Order] This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones (ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist. current 2.6.21 kernel uses this. Pros. * A user can expect local memory as much as possible. Cons. * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL. Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. [Zone-based order] This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist. Pros. * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted. Cons. * memory locality may not be best. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd. command: %echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order. command: %echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order. Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes. [Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-15 23:38:01 -07:00
mm: account pmd page tables to the process Dave noticed that unprivileged process can allocate significant amount of memory -- >500 MiB on x86_64 -- and stay unnoticed by oom-killer and memory cgroup. The trick is to allocate a lot of PMD page tables. Linux kernel doesn't account PMD tables to the process, only PTE. The use-cases below use few tricks to allocate a lot of PMD page tables while keeping VmRSS and VmPTE low. oom_score for the process will be 0. #include <errno.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <sys/mman.h> #include <sys/prctl.h> #define PUD_SIZE (1UL << 30) #define PMD_SIZE (1UL << 21) #define NR_PUD 130000 int main(void) { char *addr = NULL; unsigned long i; prctl(PR_SET_THP_DISABLE); for (i = 0; i < NR_PUD ; i++) { addr = mmap(addr + PUD_SIZE, PUD_SIZE, PROT_WRITE|PROT_READ, MAP_ANONYMOUS|MAP_PRIVATE, -1, 0); if (addr == MAP_FAILED) { perror("mmap"); break; } *addr = 'x'; munmap(addr, PMD_SIZE); mmap(addr, PMD_SIZE, PROT_WRITE|PROT_READ, MAP_ANONYMOUS|MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, -1, 0); if (addr == MAP_FAILED) perror("re-mmap"), exit(1); } printf("PID %d consumed %lu KiB in PMD page tables\n", getpid(), i * 4096 >> 10); return pause(); } The patch addresses the issue by account PMD tables to the process the same way we account PTE. The main place where PMD tables is accounted is __pmd_alloc() and free_pmd_range(). But there're few corner cases: - HugeTLB can share PMD page tables. The patch handles by accounting the table to all processes who share it. - x86 PAE pre-allocates few PMD tables on fork. - Architectures with FIRST_USER_ADDRESS > 0. We need to adjust sanity check on exit(2). Accounting only happens on configuration where PMD page table's level is present (PMD is not folded). As with nr_ptes we use per-mm counter. The counter value is used to calculate baseline for badness score by oom-killer. Signed-off-by: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com> Reported-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> Reviewed-by: Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@openvz.org> Cc: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@openvz.org> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Tested-by: Sedat Dilek <sedat.dilek@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-02-11 15:26:50 -08:00
mm: limit growth of 3% hardcoded other user reserve Add user_reserve_kbytes knob. Limit the growth of the memory reserved for other user processes to min(3% current process size, user_reserve_pages). Only about 8MB is necessary to enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred MB are required even when overcommit is disabled. user_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free pages, 128MB) I arrived at 128MB by taking the max VSZ of sshd, login, bash, and top ... then adding the RSS of each. This only affects OVERCOMMIT_NEVER mode. Background 1. user reserve __vm_enough_memory reserves a hardcoded 3% of the current process size for other applications when overcommit is disabled. This was done so that a user could recover if they launched a memory hogging process. Without the reserve, a user would easily run into a message such as: bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory 2. admin reserve Additionally, a hardcoded 3% of free memory is reserved for root in both overcommit 'guess' and 'never' modes. This was intended to prevent a scenario where root-cant-log-in and perform recovery operations. Note that this reserve shrinks, and doesn't guarantee a useful reserve. Motivation The two hardcoded memory reserves should be updated to account for current memory sizes. Also, the admin reserve would be more useful if it didn't shrink too much. When the current code was originally written, 1GB was considered "enterprise". Now the 3% reserve can grow to multiple GB on large memory systems, and it only needs to be a few hundred MB at most to enable a user or admin to recover a system with an unwanted memory hogging process. I've found that reducing these reserves is especially beneficial for a specific type of application load: * single application system * one or few processes (e.g. one per core) * allocating all available memory * not initializing every page immediately * long running I've run scientific clusters with this sort of load. A long running job sometimes failed many hours (weeks of CPU time) into a calculation. They weren't initializing all of their memory immediately, and they weren't using calloc, so I put systems into overcommit 'never' mode. These clusters run diskless and have no swap. However, with the current reserves, a user wishing to allocate as much memory as possible to one process may be prevented from using, for example, almost 2GB out of 32GB. The effect is less, but still significant when a user starts a job with one process per core. I have repeatedly seen a set of processes requesting the same amount of memory fail because one of them could not allocate the amount of memory a user would expect to be able to allocate. For example, Message Passing Interfce (MPI) processes, one per core. And it is similar for other parallel programming frameworks. Changing this reserve code will make the overcommit never mode more useful by allowing applications to allocate nearly all of the available memory. Also, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Risks * "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" The downside of the first patch-- which creates a tunable user reserve that is only used in overcommit 'never' mode--is that an admin can set it so low that a user may not be able to kill their process, even if they already have a shell prompt. Of course, a user can get in the same predicament with the current 3% reserve--they just have to launch processes until 3% becomes negligible. * root-cant-log-in problem The second patch, adding the tunable rootuser_reserve_pages, allows the admin to shoot themselves in the foot by setting it too small. They can easily get the system into a state where root-can't-log-in. However, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Alternatives * Memory cgroups provide a more flexible way to limit application memory. Not everyone wants to set up cgroups or deal with their overhead. * We could create a fourth overcommit mode which provides smaller reserves. The size of useful reserves may be drastically different depending on the whether the system is embedded or enterprise. * Force users to initialize all of their memory or use calloc. Some users don't want/expect the system to overcommit when they malloc. Overcommit 'never' mode is for this scenario, and it should work well. The new user and admin reserve tunables are simple to use, with low overhead compared to cgroups. The patches preserve current behavior where 3% of memory is less than 128MB, except that the admin reserve doesn't shrink to an unusable size under pressure. The code allows admins to tune for embedded and enterprise usage. FAQ * How is the root-cant-login problem addressed? What happens if admin_reserve_pages is set to 0? Root is free to shoot themselves in the foot by setting admin_reserve_kbytes too low. On x86_64, the minimum useful reserve is: 8MB for overcommit 'guess' 128MB for overcommit 'never' admin_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free memory, 8MB) So, anyone switching to 'never' mode needs to adjust admin_reserve_pages. * How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve? A user or the admin needs enough memory to login and perform recovery operations, which includes, at a minimum: sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.) For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS) because we only need enough memory to handle what the recovery programs will typically use. On x86_64 this is about 8MB. For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ) and add the sum of their RSS. We use VSZ instead of RSS because mode forces us to ensure we can fulfill all of the requested memory allocations-- even if the programs only use a fraction of what they ask for. On x86_64 this is about 128MB. When swap is enabled, reserves are useful even when they are as small as 10MB, regardless of overcommit mode. When both swap and overcommit are disabled, then the admin should tune the reserves higher to be absolutley safe. Over 230MB each was safest in my testing. * What happens if user_reserve_pages is set to 0? Note, this only affects overcomitt 'never' mode. Then a user will be able to allocate all available memory minus admin_reserve_kbytes. However, they will easily see a message such as: "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" And they won't be able to recover/kill their application. The admin should be able to recover the system if admin_reserve_kbytes is set appropriately. * What's the difference between overcommit 'guess' and 'never'? "Guess" allows an allocation if there are enough free + reclaimable pages. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root. "Never" allows an allocation if there is enough swap + a configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root, like "Guess" mode. It also has a hardcoded 3% of the current process size reserved for additional applications. * Why is overcommit 'guess' not suitable even when an app eventually writes to every page? It takes free pages, file pages, available swap pages, reclaimable slab pages into consideration. In other words, these are all pages available, then why isn't overcommit suitable? Because it only looks at the present state of the system. It does not take into account the memory that other applications have malloced, but haven't initialized yet. It overcommits the system. Test Summary There was little change in behavior in the default overcommit 'guess' mode with swap enabled before and after the patch. This was expected. Systems run most predictably (i.e. no oom kills) in overcommit 'never' mode with swap enabled. This also allowed the most memory to be allocated to a user application. Overcommit 'guess' mode without swap is a bad idea. It is easy to crash the system. None of the other tested combinations crashed. This matches my experience on the Roadrunner supercomputer. Without the tunable user reserve, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap does not allow the admin to recover, although the admin can. With the new tunable reserves, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap can be configured to: 1. maximize user-allocatable memory, running close to the edge of recoverability 2. maximize recoverability, sacrificing allocatable memory to ensure that a user cannot take down a system Test Description Fedora 18 VM - 4 x86_64 cores, 5725MB RAM, 4GB Swap System is booted into multiuser console mode, with unnecessary services turned off. Caches were dropped before each test. Hogs are user memtester processes that attempt to allocate all free memory as reported by /proc/meminfo In overcommit 'never' mode, memory_ratio=100 Test Results 3.9.0-rc1-mm1 Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5432/5432 no yes yes guess yes 4 5444/5444 1 yes yes guess no 1 5302/5449 no yes yes guess no 4 - crash no no never yes 1 5460/5460 1 yes yes never yes 4 5460/5460 1 yes yes never no 1 5218/5432 no no yes never no 4 5203/5448 no no yes 3.9.0-rc1-mm1-tunablereserves User and Admin Recovery show their respective reserves, if applicable. Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5419/5419 no - yes 8MB yes guess yes 4 5436/5436 1 - yes 8MB yes guess no 1 5440/5440 * - yes 8MB yes guess no 4 - crash - no 8MB no * process would successfully mlock, then the oom killer would pick it never yes 1 5446/5446 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never yes 4 5456/5456 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never no 1 5387/5429 no 128MB no 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5359/5448 no 10MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 0MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5332/5428 no 0MB no 50MB yes never no 1 5293/5429 no 0MB no 90MB yes never no 1 5001/5427 no 230MB yes 338MB yes never no 4* 4998/5424 no 230MB yes 338MB yes * more memtesters were launched, able to allocate approximately another 100MB Future Work - Test larger memory systems. - Test an embedded image. - Test other architectures. - Time malloc microbenchmarks. - Would it be useful to be able to set overcommit policy for each memory cgroup? - Some lines are slightly above 80 chars. Perhaps define a macro to convert between pages and kb? Other places in the kernel do this. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_user_reserve() static] Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker <agshew@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-04-29 15:08:10 -07:00
mm, pcp: allow restoring percpu_pagelist_fraction default Oleg reports a division by zero error on zero-length write() to the percpu_pagelist_fraction sysctl: divide error: 0000 [#1] SMP DEBUG_PAGEALLOC CPU: 1 PID: 9142 Comm: badarea_io Not tainted 3.15.0-rc2-vm-nfs+ #19 Hardware name: Bochs Bochs, BIOS Bochs 01/01/2011 task: ffff8800d5aeb6e0 ti: ffff8800d87a2000 task.ti: ffff8800d87a2000 RIP: 0010: percpu_pagelist_fraction_sysctl_handler+0x84/0x120 RSP: 0018:ffff8800d87a3e78 EFLAGS: 00010246 RAX: 0000000000000f89 RBX: ffff88011f7fd000 RCX: 0000000000000000 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000001 RDI: 0000000000000010 RBP: ffff8800d87a3e98 R08: ffffffff81d002c8 R09: ffff8800d87a3f50 R10: 000000000000000b R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000000060 R13: ffffffff81c3c3e0 R14: ffffffff81cfddf8 R15: ffff8801193b0800 FS: 00007f614f1e9740(0000) GS:ffff88011f440000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 000000008005003b CR2: 00007f614f1fa000 CR3: 00000000d9291000 CR4: 00000000000006e0 Call Trace: proc_sys_call_handler+0xb3/0xc0 proc_sys_write+0x14/0x20 vfs_write+0xba/0x1e0 SyS_write+0x46/0xb0 tracesys+0xe1/0xe6 However, if the percpu_pagelist_fraction sysctl is set by the user, it is also impossible to restore it to the kernel default since the user cannot write 0 to the sysctl. This patch allows the user to write 0 to restore the default behavior. It still requires a fraction equal to or larger than 8, however, as stated by the documentation for sanity. If a value in the range [1, 7] is written, the sysctl will return EINVAL. This successfully solves the divide by zero issue at the same time. Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Reported-by: Oleg Drokin <green@linuxhacker.ru> Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-06-23 13:22:04 -07:00
mm: limit growth of 3% hardcoded other user reserve Add user_reserve_kbytes knob. Limit the growth of the memory reserved for other user processes to min(3% current process size, user_reserve_pages). Only about 8MB is necessary to enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred MB are required even when overcommit is disabled. user_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free pages, 128MB) I arrived at 128MB by taking the max VSZ of sshd, login, bash, and top ... then adding the RSS of each. This only affects OVERCOMMIT_NEVER mode. Background 1. user reserve __vm_enough_memory reserves a hardcoded 3% of the current process size for other applications when overcommit is disabled. This was done so that a user could recover if they launched a memory hogging process. Without the reserve, a user would easily run into a message such as: bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory 2. admin reserve Additionally, a hardcoded 3% of free memory is reserved for root in both overcommit 'guess' and 'never' modes. This was intended to prevent a scenario where root-cant-log-in and perform recovery operations. Note that this reserve shrinks, and doesn't guarantee a useful reserve. Motivation The two hardcoded memory reserves should be updated to account for current memory sizes. Also, the admin reserve would be more useful if it didn't shrink too much. When the current code was originally written, 1GB was considered "enterprise". Now the 3% reserve can grow to multiple GB on large memory systems, and it only needs to be a few hundred MB at most to enable a user or admin to recover a system with an unwanted memory hogging process. I've found that reducing these reserves is especially beneficial for a specific type of application load: * single application system * one or few processes (e.g. one per core) * allocating all available memory * not initializing every page immediately * long running I've run scientific clusters with this sort of load. A long running job sometimes failed many hours (weeks of CPU time) into a calculation. They weren't initializing all of their memory immediately, and they weren't using calloc, so I put systems into overcommit 'never' mode. These clusters run diskless and have no swap. However, with the current reserves, a user wishing to allocate as much memory as possible to one process may be prevented from using, for example, almost 2GB out of 32GB. The effect is less, but still significant when a user starts a job with one process per core. I have repeatedly seen a set of processes requesting the same amount of memory fail because one of them could not allocate the amount of memory a user would expect to be able to allocate. For example, Message Passing Interfce (MPI) processes, one per core. And it is similar for other parallel programming frameworks. Changing this reserve code will make the overcommit never mode more useful by allowing applications to allocate nearly all of the available memory. Also, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Risks * "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" The downside of the first patch-- which creates a tunable user reserve that is only used in overcommit 'never' mode--is that an admin can set it so low that a user may not be able to kill their process, even if they already have a shell prompt. Of course, a user can get in the same predicament with the current 3% reserve--they just have to launch processes until 3% becomes negligible. * root-cant-log-in problem The second patch, adding the tunable rootuser_reserve_pages, allows the admin to shoot themselves in the foot by setting it too small. They can easily get the system into a state where root-can't-log-in. However, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Alternatives * Memory cgroups provide a more flexible way to limit application memory. Not everyone wants to set up cgroups or deal with their overhead. * We could create a fourth overcommit mode which provides smaller reserves. The size of useful reserves may be drastically different depending on the whether the system is embedded or enterprise. * Force users to initialize all of their memory or use calloc. Some users don't want/expect the system to overcommit when they malloc. Overcommit 'never' mode is for this scenario, and it should work well. The new user and admin reserve tunables are simple to use, with low overhead compared to cgroups. The patches preserve current behavior where 3% of memory is less than 128MB, except that the admin reserve doesn't shrink to an unusable size under pressure. The code allows admins to tune for embedded and enterprise usage. FAQ * How is the root-cant-login problem addressed? What happens if admin_reserve_pages is set to 0? Root is free to shoot themselves in the foot by setting admin_reserve_kbytes too low. On x86_64, the minimum useful reserve is: 8MB for overcommit 'guess' 128MB for overcommit 'never' admin_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free memory, 8MB) So, anyone switching to 'never' mode needs to adjust admin_reserve_pages. * How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve? A user or the admin needs enough memory to login and perform recovery operations, which includes, at a minimum: sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.) For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS) because we only need enough memory to handle what the recovery programs will typically use. On x86_64 this is about 8MB. For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ) and add the sum of their RSS. We use VSZ instead of RSS because mode forces us to ensure we can fulfill all of the requested memory allocations-- even if the programs only use a fraction of what they ask for. On x86_64 this is about 128MB. When swap is enabled, reserves are useful even when they are as small as 10MB, regardless of overcommit mode. When both swap and overcommit are disabled, then the admin should tune the reserves higher to be absolutley safe. Over 230MB each was safest in my testing. * What happens if user_reserve_pages is set to 0? Note, this only affects overcomitt 'never' mode. Then a user will be able to allocate all available memory minus admin_reserve_kbytes. However, they will easily see a message such as: "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" And they won't be able to recover/kill their application. The admin should be able to recover the system if admin_reserve_kbytes is set appropriately. * What's the difference between overcommit 'guess' and 'never'? "Guess" allows an allocation if there are enough free + reclaimable pages. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root. "Never" allows an allocation if there is enough swap + a configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root, like "Guess" mode. It also has a hardcoded 3% of the current process size reserved for additional applications. * Why is overcommit 'guess' not suitable even when an app eventually writes to every page? It takes free pages, file pages, available swap pages, reclaimable slab pages into consideration. In other words, these are all pages available, then why isn't overcommit suitable? Because it only looks at the present state of the system. It does not take into account the memory that other applications have malloced, but haven't initialized yet. It overcommits the system. Test Summary There was little change in behavior in the default overcommit 'guess' mode with swap enabled before and after the patch. This was expected. Systems run most predictably (i.e. no oom kills) in overcommit 'never' mode with swap enabled. This also allowed the most memory to be allocated to a user application. Overcommit 'guess' mode without swap is a bad idea. It is easy to crash the system. None of the other tested combinations crashed. This matches my experience on the Roadrunner supercomputer. Without the tunable user reserve, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap does not allow the admin to recover, although the admin can. With the new tunable reserves, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap can be configured to: 1. maximize user-allocatable memory, running close to the edge of recoverability 2. maximize recoverability, sacrificing allocatable memory to ensure that a user cannot take down a system Test Description Fedora 18 VM - 4 x86_64 cores, 5725MB RAM, 4GB Swap System is booted into multiuser console mode, with unnecessary services turned off. Caches were dropped before each test. Hogs are user memtester processes that attempt to allocate all free memory as reported by /proc/meminfo In overcommit 'never' mode, memory_ratio=100 Test Results 3.9.0-rc1-mm1 Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5432/5432 no yes yes guess yes 4 5444/5444 1 yes yes guess no 1 5302/5449 no yes yes guess no 4 - crash no no never yes 1 5460/5460 1 yes yes never yes 4 5460/5460 1 yes yes never no 1 5218/5432 no no yes never no 4 5203/5448 no no yes 3.9.0-rc1-mm1-tunablereserves User and Admin Recovery show their respective reserves, if applicable. Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5419/5419 no - yes 8MB yes guess yes 4 5436/5436 1 - yes 8MB yes guess no 1 5440/5440 * - yes 8MB yes guess no 4 - crash - no 8MB no * process would successfully mlock, then the oom killer would pick it never yes 1 5446/5446 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never yes 4 5456/5456 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never no 1 5387/5429 no 128MB no 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5359/5448 no 10MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 0MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5332/5428 no 0MB no 50MB yes never no 1 5293/5429 no 0MB no 90MB yes never no 1 5001/5427 no 230MB yes 338MB yes never no 4* 4998/5424 no 230MB yes 338MB yes * more memtesters were launched, able to allocate approximately another 100MB Future Work - Test larger memory systems. - Test an embedded image. - Test other architectures. - Time malloc microbenchmarks. - Would it be useful to be able to set overcommit policy for each memory cgroup? - Some lines are slightly above 80 chars. Perhaps define a macro to convert between pages and kb? Other places in the kernel do this. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_user_reserve() static] Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker <agshew@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-04-29 15:08:10 -07:00
mm: limit growth of 3% hardcoded other user reserve Add user_reserve_kbytes knob. Limit the growth of the memory reserved for other user processes to min(3% current process size, user_reserve_pages). Only about 8MB is necessary to enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred MB are required even when overcommit is disabled. user_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free pages, 128MB) I arrived at 128MB by taking the max VSZ of sshd, login, bash, and top ... then adding the RSS of each. This only affects OVERCOMMIT_NEVER mode. Background 1. user reserve __vm_enough_memory reserves a hardcoded 3% of the current process size for other applications when overcommit is disabled. This was done so that a user could recover if they launched a memory hogging process. Without the reserve, a user would easily run into a message such as: bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory 2. admin reserve Additionally, a hardcoded 3% of free memory is reserved for root in both overcommit 'guess' and 'never' modes. This was intended to prevent a scenario where root-cant-log-in and perform recovery operations. Note that this reserve shrinks, and doesn't guarantee a useful reserve. Motivation The two hardcoded memory reserves should be updated to account for current memory sizes. Also, the admin reserve would be more useful if it didn't shrink too much. When the current code was originally written, 1GB was considered "enterprise". Now the 3% reserve can grow to multiple GB on large memory systems, and it only needs to be a few hundred MB at most to enable a user or admin to recover a system with an unwanted memory hogging process. I've found that reducing these reserves is especially beneficial for a specific type of application load: * single application system * one or few processes (e.g. one per core) * allocating all available memory * not initializing every page immediately * long running I've run scientific clusters with this sort of load. A long running job sometimes failed many hours (weeks of CPU time) into a calculation. They weren't initializing all of their memory immediately, and they weren't using calloc, so I put systems into overcommit 'never' mode. These clusters run diskless and have no swap. However, with the current reserves, a user wishing to allocate as much memory as possible to one process may be prevented from using, for example, almost 2GB out of 32GB. The effect is less, but still significant when a user starts a job with one process per core. I have repeatedly seen a set of processes requesting the same amount of memory fail because one of them could not allocate the amount of memory a user would expect to be able to allocate. For example, Message Passing Interfce (MPI) processes, one per core. And it is similar for other parallel programming frameworks. Changing this reserve code will make the overcommit never mode more useful by allowing applications to allocate nearly all of the available memory. Also, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Risks * "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" The downside of the first patch-- which creates a tunable user reserve that is only used in overcommit 'never' mode--is that an admin can set it so low that a user may not be able to kill their process, even if they already have a shell prompt. Of course, a user can get in the same predicament with the current 3% reserve--they just have to launch processes until 3% becomes negligible. * root-cant-log-in problem The second patch, adding the tunable rootuser_reserve_pages, allows the admin to shoot themselves in the foot by setting it too small. They can easily get the system into a state where root-can't-log-in. However, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Alternatives * Memory cgroups provide a more flexible way to limit application memory. Not everyone wants to set up cgroups or deal with their overhead. * We could create a fourth overcommit mode which provides smaller reserves. The size of useful reserves may be drastically different depending on the whether the system is embedded or enterprise. * Force users to initialize all of their memory or use calloc. Some users don't want/expect the system to overcommit when they malloc. Overcommit 'never' mode is for this scenario, and it should work well. The new user and admin reserve tunables are simple to use, with low overhead compared to cgroups. The patches preserve current behavior where 3% of memory is less than 128MB, except that the admin reserve doesn't shrink to an unusable size under pressure. The code allows admins to tune for embedded and enterprise usage. FAQ * How is the root-cant-login problem addressed? What happens if admin_reserve_pages is set to 0? Root is free to shoot themselves in the foot by setting admin_reserve_kbytes too low. On x86_64, the minimum useful reserve is: 8MB for overcommit 'guess' 128MB for overcommit 'never' admin_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free memory, 8MB) So, anyone switching to 'never' mode needs to adjust admin_reserve_pages. * How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve? A user or the admin needs enough memory to login and perform recovery operations, which includes, at a minimum: sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.) For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS) because we only need enough memory to handle what the recovery programs will typically use. On x86_64 this is about 8MB. For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ) and add the sum of their RSS. We use VSZ instead of RSS because mode forces us to ensure we can fulfill all of the requested memory allocations-- even if the programs only use a fraction of what they ask for. On x86_64 this is about 128MB. When swap is enabled, reserves are useful even when they are as small as 10MB, regardless of overcommit mode. When both swap and overcommit are disabled, then the admin should tune the reserves higher to be absolutley safe. Over 230MB each was safest in my testing. * What happens if user_reserve_pages is set to 0? Note, this only affects overcomitt 'never' mode. Then a user will be able to allocate all available memory minus admin_reserve_kbytes. However, they will easily see a message such as: "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" And they won't be able to recover/kill their application. The admin should be able to recover the system if admin_reserve_kbytes is set appropriately. * What's the difference between overcommit 'guess' and 'never'? "Guess" allows an allocation if there are enough free + reclaimable pages. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root. "Never" allows an allocation if there is enough swap + a configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root, like "Guess" mode. It also has a hardcoded 3% of the current process size reserved for additional applications. * Why is overcommit 'guess' not suitable even when an app eventually writes to every page? It takes free pages, file pages, available swap pages, reclaimable slab pages into consideration. In other words, these are all pages available, then why isn't overcommit suitable? Because it only looks at the present state of the system. It does not take into account the memory that other applications have malloced, but haven't initialized yet. It overcommits the system. Test Summary There was little change in behavior in the default overcommit 'guess' mode with swap enabled before and after the patch. This was expected. Systems run most predictably (i.e. no oom kills) in overcommit 'never' mode with swap enabled. This also allowed the most memory to be allocated to a user application. Overcommit 'guess' mode without swap is a bad idea. It is easy to crash the system. None of the other tested combinations crashed. This matches my experience on the Roadrunner supercomputer. Without the tunable user reserve, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap does not allow the admin to recover, although the admin can. With the new tunable reserves, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap can be configured to: 1. maximize user-allocatable memory, running close to the edge of recoverability 2. maximize recoverability, sacrificing allocatable memory to ensure that a user cannot take down a system Test Description Fedora 18 VM - 4 x86_64 cores, 5725MB RAM, 4GB Swap System is booted into multiuser console mode, with unnecessary services turned off. Caches were dropped before each test. Hogs are user memtester processes that attempt to allocate all free memory as reported by /proc/meminfo In overcommit 'never' mode, memory_ratio=100 Test Results 3.9.0-rc1-mm1 Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5432/5432 no yes yes guess yes 4 5444/5444 1 yes yes guess no 1 5302/5449 no yes yes guess no 4 - crash no no never yes 1 5460/5460 1 yes yes never yes 4 5460/5460 1 yes yes never no 1 5218/5432 no no yes never no 4 5203/5448 no no yes 3.9.0-rc1-mm1-tunablereserves User and Admin Recovery show their respective reserves, if applicable. Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5419/5419 no - yes 8MB yes guess yes 4 5436/5436 1 - yes 8MB yes guess no 1 5440/5440 * - yes 8MB yes guess no 4 - crash - no 8MB no * process would successfully mlock, then the oom killer would pick it never yes 1 5446/5446 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never yes 4 5456/5456 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never no 1 5387/5429 no 128MB no 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5359/5448 no 10MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 0MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5332/5428 no 0MB no 50MB yes never no 1 5293/5429 no 0MB no 90MB yes never no 1 5001/5427 no 230MB yes 338MB yes never no 4* 4998/5424 no 230MB yes 338MB yes * more memtesters were launched, able to allocate approximately another 100MB Future Work - Test larger memory systems. - Test an embedded image. - Test other architectures. - Time malloc microbenchmarks. - Would it be useful to be able to set overcommit policy for each memory cgroup? - Some lines are slightly above 80 chars. Perhaps define a macro to convert between pages and kb? Other places in the kernel do this. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_user_reserve() static] Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker <agshew@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-04-29 15:08:10 -07:00
mm: disable zone_reclaim_mode by default When it was introduced, zone_reclaim_mode made sense as NUMA distances punished and workloads were generally partitioned to fit into a NUMA node. NUMA machines are now common but few of the workloads are NUMA-aware and it's routine to see major performance degradation due to zone_reclaim_mode being enabled but relatively few can identify the problem. Those that require zone_reclaim_mode are likely to be able to detect when it needs to be enabled and tune appropriately so lets have a sensible default for the bulk of users. This patch (of 2): zone_reclaim_mode causes processes to prefer reclaiming memory from local node instead of spilling over to other nodes. This made sense initially when NUMA machines were almost exclusively HPC and the workload was partitioned into nodes. The NUMA penalties were sufficiently high to justify reclaiming the memory. On current machines and workloads it is often the case that zone_reclaim_mode destroys performance but not all users know how to detect this. Favour the common case and disable it by default. Users that are sophisticated enough to know they need zone_reclaim_mode will detect it. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Reviewed-by: Zhang Yanfei <zhangyanfei@cn.fujitsu.com> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-06-04 16:07:14 -07:00
mm: disable zone_reclaim_mode by default When it was introduced, zone_reclaim_mode made sense as NUMA distances punished and workloads were generally partitioned to fit into a NUMA node. NUMA machines are now common but few of the workloads are NUMA-aware and it's routine to see major performance degradation due to zone_reclaim_mode being enabled but relatively few can identify the problem. Those that require zone_reclaim_mode are likely to be able to detect when it needs to be enabled and tune appropriately so lets have a sensible default for the bulk of users. This patch (of 2): zone_reclaim_mode causes processes to prefer reclaiming memory from local node instead of spilling over to other nodes. This made sense initially when NUMA machines were almost exclusively HPC and the workload was partitioned into nodes. The NUMA penalties were sufficiently high to justify reclaiming the memory. On current machines and workloads it is often the case that zone_reclaim_mode destroys performance but not all users know how to detect this. Favour the common case and disable it by default. Users that are sophisticated enough to know they need zone_reclaim_mode will detect it. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Reviewed-by: Zhang Yanfei <zhangyanfei@cn.fujitsu.com> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-06-04 16:07:14 -07:00