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David Hildenbrand 5a6b4cc5b7 virtio-balloon: Switch back to OOM handler for VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_DEFLATE_ON_OOM 
Commit 71994620bb ("virtio_balloon: replace oom notifier with shrinker")
changed the behavior when deflation happens automatically. Instead of
deflating when called by the OOM handler, the shrinker is used.

However, the balloon is not simply some slab cache that should be
shrunk when under memory pressure. The shrinker does not have a concept of
priorities, so this behavior cannot be configured.

There was a report that this results in undesired side effects when
inflating the balloon to shrink the page cache. [1]
	"When inflating the balloon against page cache (i.e. no free memory
	 remains) vmscan.c will both shrink page cache, but also invoke the
	 shrinkers -- including the balloon's shrinker. So the balloon
	 driver allocates memory which requires reclaim, vmscan gets this
	 memory by shrinking the balloon, and then the driver adds the
	 memory back to the balloon. Basically a busy no-op."

The name "deflate on OOM" makes it pretty clear when deflation should
happen - after other approaches to reclaim memory failed, not while
reclaiming. This allows to minimize the footprint of a guest - memory
will only be taken out of the balloon when really needed.

Especially, a drop_slab() will result in the whole balloon getting
deflated - undesired. While handling it via the OOM handler might not be
perfect, it keeps existing behavior. If we want a different behavior, then
we need a new feature bit and document it properly (although, there should
be a clear use case and the intended effects should be well described).

Keep using the shrinker for VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_FREE_PAGE_HINT, because
this has no such side effects. Always register the shrinker with
VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_FREE_PAGE_HINT now. We are always allowed to reuse free
pages that are still to be processed by the guest. The hypervisor takes
care of identifying and resolving possible races between processing a
hinting request and the guest reusing a page.

In contrast to pre commit 71994620bb ("virtio_balloon: replace oom
notifier with shrinker"), don't add a moodule parameter to configure the
number of pages to deflate on OOM. Can be re-added if really needed.
Also, pay attention that leak_balloon() returns the number of 4k pages -
convert it properly in virtio_balloon_oom_notify().

Note1: using the OOM handler is frowned upon, but it really is what we
       need for this feature.

Note2: without VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_MUST_TELL_HOST (iow, always with QEMU) we
       could actually skip sending deflation requests to our hypervisor,
       making the OOM path *very* simple. Besically freeing pages and
       updating the balloon. If the communication with the host ever
       becomes a problem on this call path.

[1] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-virtualization/msg40863.html

Test report by Tyler Sanderson:

Test setup: VM with 16 CPU, 64GB RAM. Running Debian 10. We have a 42
GB file full of random bytes that we continually cat to /dev/null.
This fills the page cache as the file is read. Meanwhile we trigger
the balloon to inflate, with a target size of 53 GB. This setup causes
the balloon inflation to pressure the page cache as the page cache is
also trying to grow. Afterwards we shrink the balloon back to zero (so
total deflate = total inflate).

Without patch (kernel 4.19.0-5):
Inflation never reaches the target until we stop the "cat file >
/dev/null" process. Total inflation time was 542 seconds. The longest
period that made no net forward progress was 315 seconds (see attached
graph).
Result of "grep balloon /proc/vmstat" after the test:
balloon_inflate 154828377
balloon_deflate 154828377

With patch (kernel 5.6.0-rc4+):
Total inflation duration was 63 seconds. No deflate-queue activity
occurs when pressuring the page-cache.
Result of "grep balloon /proc/vmstat" after the test:
balloon_inflate 12968539
balloon_deflate 12968539

Conclusion: This patch fixes the issue. In the test it reduced
inflate/deflate activity by 12x, and reduced inflation time by 8.6x.
But more importantly, if we hadn't killed the "grep balloon
/proc/vmstat" process then, without the patch, the inflation process
would never reach the target.

Attached [1] is a png of a graph showing the problematic behavior without
this patch. It shows deflate-queue activity increasing linearly while
balloon size stays constant over the course of more than 8 minutes of
the test.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/CAJuQAmphPcfew1v_EOgAdSFiprzjiZjmOf3iJDmFX0gD6b9TYQ@mail.gmail.com/2-without_patch.png

Full test report and discussion [2]:

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/r/CAJuQAmphPcfew1v_EOgAdSFiprzjiZjmOf3iJDmFX0gD6b9TYQ@mail.gmail.com

Tested-by: Tyler Sanderson <tysand@google.com>
Reported-by: Tyler Sanderson <tysand@google.com>
Cc: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Cc: Wei Wang <wei.w.wang@intel.com>
Cc: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@linux.intel.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Nadav Amit <namit@vmware.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200205163402.42627-4-david@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
2020-03-23 09:50:02 -04:00
arch x86/mm: split vmalloc_sync_all() 2020-03-21 18:56:06 -07:00
block block: Fix partition support for host aware zoned block devices 2020-03-12 07:54:39 -06:00
certs certs: Add wrapper function to check blacklisted binary hash 2019-11-12 12:25:50 +11:00
crypto Merge branch 'next-integrity' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/zohar/linux-integrity 2020-02-20 15:15:16 -08:00
Documentation Kbuild fixes for v5.6 (3rd) 2020-03-19 09:57:48 -07:00
drivers virtio-balloon: Switch back to OOM handler for VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_DEFLATE_ON_OOM 2020-03-23 09:50:02 -04:00
fs for-5.6-rc6-tag 2020-03-22 11:35:33 -07:00
include virtio-net: Introduce hash report feature 2020-03-23 09:50:02 -04:00
init int128: fix __uint128_t compiler test in Kconfig 2020-03-12 07:43:03 +09:00
ipc Revert "ipc,sem: remove uneeded sem_undo_list lock usage in exit_sem()" 2020-02-21 11:22:15 -08:00
kernel x86/mm: split vmalloc_sync_all() 2020-03-21 18:56:06 -07:00
lib Tracing updates: 2020-02-26 10:34:42 -08:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Rename other to deprecated 2019-05-03 06:34:32 -06:00
mm x86/mm: split vmalloc_sync_all() 2020-03-21 18:56:06 -07:00
net io_uring-5.6-20200320 2020-03-21 11:54:47 -07:00
samples Kbuild updates for v5.6 (2nd) 2020-02-09 16:05:50 -08:00
scripts Kbuild fixes for v5.6 (3rd) 2020-03-19 09:57:48 -07:00
security Merge branch 'next-integrity' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/zohar/linux-integrity 2020-02-20 15:15:16 -08:00
sound ALSA: hda/realtek - Enable the headset of Acer N50-600 with ALC662 2020-03-17 18:06:19 +01:00
tools tools/virtio: option to build an out of tree module 2020-03-23 09:50:02 -04:00
usr initramfs: restore default compression behavior 2020-03-17 09:50:37 +09:00
virt KVM/arm fixes for 5.6, take #1 2020-02-28 11:50:06 +01:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with the latest for_each macro list 2020-03-06 21:50:05 +01:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for dts files 2019-12-04 19:44:11 -08:00
.gitignore selftest/lkdtm: Use local .gitignore 2020-03-02 08:39:39 -07:00
.mailmap A handful of small documentation fixes that wandered in. 2020-02-07 13:03:10 -08:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: Hand MIPS over to Thomas 2020-02-24 22:43:18 -08:00
Kbuild kbuild: rename hostprogs-y/always to hostprogs/always-y 2020-02-04 01:53:07 +09:00
Kconfig docs: kbuild: convert docs to ReST and rename to *.rst 2019-06-14 14:21:21 -06:00
MAINTAINERS Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2020-03-12 16:19:19 -07:00
Makefile Linux 5.6-rc7 2020-03-22 18:31:56 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

README 

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.