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Testing from the XFS folk revealed that there is still too much I/O from the end of the LRU in kswapd. Previously it was considered acceptable by VM people for a small number of pages to be written back from reclaim with testing generally showing about 0.3% of pages reclaimed were written back (higher if memory was low). That writing back a small number of pages is ok has been heavily disputed for quite some time and Dave Chinner explained it well; It doesn't have to be a very high number to be a problem. IO is orders of magnitude slower than the CPU time it takes to flush a page, so the cost of making a bad flush decision is very high. And single page writeback from the LRU is almost always a bad flush decision. To complicate matters, filesystems respond very differently to requests from reclaim according to Christoph Hellwig; xfs tries to write it back if the requester is kswapd ext4 ignores the request if it's a delayed allocation btrfs ignores the request As a result, each filesystem has different performance characteristics when under memory pressure and there are many pages being dirtied. In some cases, the request is ignored entirely so the VM cannot depend on the IO being dispatched. The objective of this series is to reduce writing of filesystem-backed pages from reclaim, play nicely with writeback that is already in progress and throttle reclaim appropriately when writeback pages are encountered. The assumption is that the flushers will always write pages faster than if reclaim issues the IO. A secondary goal is to avoid the problem whereby direct reclaim splices two potentially deep call stacks together. There is a potential new problem as reclaim has less control over how long before a page in a particularly zone or container is cleaned and direct reclaimers depend on kswapd or flusher threads to do the necessary work. However, as filesystems sometimes ignore direct reclaim requests already, it is not expected to be a serious issue. Patch 1 disables writeback of filesystem pages from direct reclaim entirely. Anonymous pages are still written. Patch 2 removes dead code in lumpy reclaim as it is no longer able to synchronously write pages. This hurts lumpy reclaim but there is an expectation that compaction is used for hugepage allocations these days and lumpy reclaim's days are numbered. Patches 3-4 add warnings to XFS and ext4 if called from direct reclaim. With patch 1, this "never happens" and is intended to catch regressions in this logic in the future. Patch 5 disables writeback of filesystem pages from kswapd unless the priority is raised to the point where kswapd is considered to be in trouble. Patch 6 throttles reclaimers if too many dirty pages are being encountered and the zones or backing devices are congested. Patch 7 invalidates dirty pages found at the end of the LRU so they are reclaimed quickly after being written back rather than waiting for a reclaimer to find them I consider this series to be orthogonal to the writeback work but it is worth noting that the writeback work affects the viability of patch 8 in particular. I tested this on ext4 and xfs using fs_mark, a simple writeback test based on dd and a micro benchmark that does a streaming write to a large mapping (exercises use-once LRU logic) followed by streaming writes to a mix of anonymous and file-backed mappings. The command line for fs_mark when botted with 512M looked something like ./fs_mark -d /tmp/fsmark-2676 -D 100 -N 150 -n 150 -L 25 -t 1 -S0 -s 10485760 The number of files was adjusted depending on the amount of available memory so that the files created was about 3xRAM. For multiple threads, the -d switch is specified multiple times. The test machine is x86-64 with an older generation of AMD processor with 4 cores. The underlying storage was 4 disks configured as RAID-0 as this was the best configuration of storage I had available. Swap is on a separate disk. Dirty ratio was tuned to 40% instead of the default of 20%. Testing was run with and without monitors to both verify that the patches were operating as expected and that any performance gain was real and not due to interference from monitors. Here is a summary of results based on testing XFS. 512M1P-xfs Files/s mean 32.69 ( 0.00%) 34.44 ( 5.08%) 512M1P-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 51.41 48.29 512M1P-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 114.09 108.61 512M1P-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 113.46 109.34 512M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 62% 63% 512M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 56% 61% 512M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 44% 42% 512M-xfs Files/s mean 30.78 ( 0.00%) 35.94 (14.36%) 512M-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 56.08 48.90 512M-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 112.22 98.13 512M-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 219.15 196.67 512M-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 54% 56% 512M-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 54% 55% 512M-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 45% 44% 512M-4X-xfs Files/s mean 30.31 ( 0.00%) 33.33 ( 9.06%) 512M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 63.26 55.88 512M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 100.90 90.25 512M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 261.73 255.38 512M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 49% 50% 512M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 54% 56% 512M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 37% 36% 512M-16X-xfs Files/s mean 60.89 ( 0.00%) 65.22 ( 6.64%) 512M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 67.47 58.25 512M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 103.22 90.89 512M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 237.09 198.82 512M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 45% 46% 512M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 53% 55% 512M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 33% 33% Up until 512-4X, the FSmark improvements were statistically significant. For the 4X and 16X tests the results were within standard deviations but just barely. The time to completion for all tests is improved which is an important result. In general, kswapd efficiency is not affected by skipping dirty pages. 1024M1P-xfs Files/s mean 39.09 ( 0.00%) 41.15 ( 5.01%) 1024M1P-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 84.14 80.41 1024M1P-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 210.77 184.78 1024M1P-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 162.00 160.34 1024M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 69% 75% 1024M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 71% 77% 1024M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 43% 44% 1024M-xfs Files/s mean 35.45 ( 0.00%) 37.00 ( 4.19%) 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 94.59 91.00 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 229.84 195.08 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 405.38 440.29 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 79% 71% 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 74% 74% 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 39% 42% 1024M-4X-xfs Files/s mean 32.63 ( 0.00%) 35.05 ( 6.90%) 1024M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 103.33 97.74 1024M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 204.48 178.57 1024M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 528.38 511.88 1024M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 81% 70% 1024M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 73% 72% 1024M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 39% 38% 1024M-16X-xfs Files/s mean 42.65 ( 0.00%) 42.97 ( 0.74%) 1024M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 103.11 99.11 1024M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 200.83 178.24 1024M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 397.35 459.82 1024M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 84% 69% 1024M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 74% 73% 1024M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 39% 40% All FSMark tests up to 16X had statistically significant improvements. For the most part, tests are completing faster with the exception of the streaming writes to a mixture of anonymous and file-backed mappings which were slower in two cases In the cases where the mmap-strm tests were slower, there was more swapping due to dirty pages being skipped. The number of additional pages swapped is almost identical to the fewer number of pages written from reclaim. In other words, roughly the same number of pages were reclaimed but swapping was slower. As the test is a bit unrealistic and stresses memory heavily, the small shift is acceptable. 4608M1P-xfs Files/s mean 29.75 ( 0.00%) 30.96 ( 3.91%) 4608M1P-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 512.01 492.15 4608M1P-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 618.18 566.24 4608M1P-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 488.05 465.07 4608M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 93% 86% 4608M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 88% 84% 4608M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 46% 45% 4608M-xfs Files/s mean 27.60 ( 0.00%) 28.85 ( 4.33%) 4608M-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 555.96 532.34 4608M-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 659.72 571.85 4608M-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 1082.57 1146.38 4608M-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 89% 91% 4608M-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 88% 82% 4608M-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 48% 46% 4608M-4X-xfs Files/s mean 26.00 ( 0.00%) 27.47 ( 5.35%) 4608M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 592.91 564.00 4608M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 616.65 575.07 4608M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 1773.02 1631.53 4608M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 90% 94% 4608M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 87% 82% 4608M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 43% 43% 4608M-16X-xfs Files/s mean 26.07 ( 0.00%) 26.42 ( 1.32%) 4608M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 602.69 585.78 4608M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 606.60 573.81 4608M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 1549.75 1441.86 4608M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 98% 98% 4608M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 88% 82% 4608M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 44% 42% Unlike the other tests, the fsmark results are not statistically significant but the min and max times are both improved and for the most part, tests completed faster. There are other indications that this is an improvement as well. For example, in the vast majority of cases, there were fewer pages scanned by direct reclaim implying in many cases that stalls due to direct reclaim are reduced. KSwapd is scanning more due to skipping dirty pages which is unfortunate but the CPU usage is still acceptable In an earlier set of tests, I used blktrace and in almost all cases throughput throughout the entire test was higher. However, I ended up discarding those results as recording blktrace data was too heavy for my liking. On a laptop, I plugged in a USB stick and ran a similar tests of tests using it as backing storage. A desktop environment was running and for the entire duration of the tests, firefox and gnome terminal were launching and exiting to vaguely simulate a user. 1024M-xfs Files/s mean 0.41 ( 0.00%) 0.44 ( 6.82%) 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 2053.52 1641.03 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 1229.53 768.05 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 4126.44 4597.03 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 84% 85% 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 92% 81% 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 60% 51% 1024M-xfs Avg wait ms fsmark 5404.53 4473.87 1024M-xfs Avg wait ms simple-wb 2541.35 1453.54 1024M-xfs Avg wait ms mmap-strm 3400.25 3852.53 The mmap-strm results were hurt because firefox launching had a tendency to push the test out of memory. On the postive side, firefox launched marginally faster with the patches applied. Time to completion for many tests was faster but more importantly - the "Avg wait" time as measured by iostat was far lower implying the system would be more responsive. It was also the case that "Avg wait ms" on the root filesystem was lower. I tested it manually and while the system felt slightly more responsive while copying data to a USB stick, it was marginal enough that it could be my imagination. This patch: do not writeback filesystem pages in direct reclaim. When kswapd is failing to keep zones above the min watermark, a process will enter direct reclaim in the same manner kswapd does. If a dirty page is encountered during the scan, this page is written to backing storage using mapping->writepage. This causes two problems. First, it can result in very deep call stacks, particularly if the target storage or filesystem are complex. Some filesystems ignore write requests from direct reclaim as a result. The second is that a single-page flush is inefficient in terms of IO. While there is an expectation that the elevator will merge requests, this does not always happen. Quoting Christoph Hellwig; The elevator has a relatively small window it can operate on, and can never fix up a bad large scale writeback pattern. This patch prevents direct reclaim writing back filesystem pages by checking if current is kswapd. Anonymous pages are still written to swap as there is not the equivalent of a flusher thread for anonymous pages. If the dirty pages cannot be written back, they are placed back on the LRU lists. There is now a direct dependency on dirty page balancing to prevent too many pages in the system being dirtied which would prevent reclaim making forward progress. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> Cc: Johannes Weiner <jweiner@redhat.com> Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Cc: Alex Elder <aelder@sgi.com> Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> |
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| .. | ||
| backing-dev.c | ||
| bootmem.c | ||
| bounce.c | ||
| cleancache.c | ||
| compaction.c | ||
| debug-pagealloc.c | ||
| dmapool.c | ||
| fadvise.c | ||
| failslab.c | ||
| filemap_xip.c | ||
| filemap.c | ||
| fremap.c | ||
| highmem.c | ||
| huge_memory.c | ||
| hugetlb.c | ||
| hwpoison-inject.c | ||
| init-mm.c | ||
| internal.h | ||
| Kconfig | ||
| Kconfig.debug | ||
| kmemcheck.c | ||
| kmemleak-test.c | ||
| kmemleak.c | ||
| ksm.c | ||
| maccess.c | ||
| madvise.c | ||
| Makefile | ||
| memblock.c | ||
| memcontrol.c | ||
| memory_hotplug.c | ||
| memory-failure.c | ||
| memory.c | ||
| mempolicy.c | ||
| mempool.c | ||
| migrate.c | ||
| mincore.c | ||
| mlock.c | ||
| mm_init.c | ||
| mmap.c | ||
| mmu_context.c | ||
| mmu_notifier.c | ||
| mmzone.c | ||
| mprotect.c | ||
| mremap.c | ||
| msync.c | ||
| nobootmem.c | ||
| nommu.c | ||
| oom_kill.c | ||
| page_alloc.c | ||
| page_cgroup.c | ||
| page_io.c | ||
| page_isolation.c | ||
| page-writeback.c | ||
| pagewalk.c | ||
| percpu-km.c | ||
| percpu-vm.c | ||
| percpu.c | ||
| pgtable-generic.c | ||
| prio_tree.c | ||
| process_vm_access.c | ||
| quicklist.c | ||
| readahead.c | ||
| rmap.c | ||
| shmem.c | ||
| slab.c | ||
| slob.c | ||
| slub.c | ||
| sparse-vmemmap.c | ||
| sparse.c | ||
| swap_state.c | ||
| swap.c | ||
| swapfile.c | ||
| thrash.c | ||
| truncate.c | ||
| util.c | ||
| vmalloc.c | ||
| vmscan.c | ||
| vmstat.c | ||