Re: [RFC] mm-controller

[Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-06-21 at 16:33 +0530, Balbir Singh wrote:
>> Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>>> Having read the RSS and Pagecache controllers some things bothered me.
>>>
>>>  - the duplication of much of the reclaim data (not code)
>>>    and the size increase as a result thereof.
>>>
>> Are you referring to the duplication due to the per container LRU list?
> 
> Yes, those bother me on two counts, the memory footprint, and
> conceptually. How can one page have two ages?
> 

You need to put on your virtualization cap :-)

> The interaction between two lrus it non-trivial.
> 

Actually, the interaction is easy to understand. The per-zone LRU is
a superset of the per-container LRU. A page may belong to both, but
if it is a user page, it will definitely belong to the per-zone LRU.
Isolation of pages occur in both LRU's occur independently. The page
age in the per container LRU list is less than or equal to it's age
in the per-zone LRU list.


>>>  - the clear distinction between mapped (RSS) and unmapped (pagecache)
>>>    limits. Linux doesn't impose individual limits on these, so I don't
>>>    see why containers should.
>>>
>> Linux doesn't impose induvidual limits, but we do have vm_swappiness and
>> vm_dirty_ratio to get some form of control over what pages we evict.
>> The advantage of splitting RSS and unmapped page cache is that
> 
> vm_dirty_ratio - is about dirty pages, mapped or not.

Yes, but it's a way of controlling/keeping the reclaim time under check.
Too many dirty pages == longer time to recycle a page. Also, it helps
consistency of data. The reason I mentioned this, is because it does
provide some form of control.

> vm_swappiness - is the ugliest part of reclaim, and not something I
> consider worthy of an example.
> 

I agree, but my point was that there are scenarios where people want
to be able to control (only) page cache. One example, that I am aware
of is applications that manage their own page cache and use
O_DIRECT for IO. They would want to have almost zero page cache.

>> 1. Users get more control over their containers
>> 2. It's easier to implement containers in phases
> 
> Not quite sure on 2, from reading the pagecache controller, I got the
> impression that enforcing both limits got you into trouble. Merging the
> limits would rid us of that issue, no?
> 

Yes, it would. This point is worth discussing, but with the example above
I feel we need to differentiate between the two.

>>>  - while I appreciate the statistical nature of one container
>>>    per page, I'm bit sceptical because there is no forced migration
>>>    cycle.
>>>
>> I have patches for per container page_referenced() feature and we
>> mark_page_accessed() is already container aware
>>
>> Please see http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/26/482
> 
> Thanks.
> 
>> There is no forced migration, but when a container hits its limit.
> 
> Right, but the thing I'm worried about is a large part of text getting
> stuck in 1 container because it is very active (glibc comes to mind).
> That will never be properly distributed among containers.
> 

But I still wonder if we need to distribute it, if container 1 is using
it's pages actively. Others get a free ride, but as long as the system
administrators are aware of that happening, it's all good.

> Inter queue CPU load balancing should (and does with recent versions of
> CFS IIRC) over balance the queues, otherwise you get the 2-cpu 3-tasks
> 2:1 imbalance where the lumped tasks get an unfair amount of cpu time.
> 
> I was thinking of similar artifacts.
> 
> With the current dual list approach, something like that could be done
> by treating the container lists as pure FIFO (and ignore the reference
> bit and all that) and make container reclaim only unmap, not write out
> pages.
> 
> Then global reclaim will do the work (if needed), and containers get
> churn, equating the page ownership.
> 

I did implement the unmap only logic for shared pages in version 2
of my RSS controller

http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/19/10

It can be added back if required quite easily. Pavel what do you think
about it?

>> http://lwn.net/Articles/237851/ talks about our current TODOs.
>>
>>>
>>> So, while pondering the problem, I wrote down some ideas....
>>>
>>> While I appreciate that people do not like to start over again, I think
>>> it would be fruit-full to at least discuss the various design decisions.
>>>
>> First, thank you for your interest and your proposal. My opinion on
>> the new design is that, we should not move to it, _unless the current
>> design_ is completely non-fixable. 
>>
>> Don Knuth says he often re-learnt that
>> ("Premature optimization is the root of all evil -- C.A.R Hoare").
>> Could you please try our patches
> 
> Ah, here we differ of opinion; I see it as design, not optimisation.
> 
> 

Yes, I see it as design optimization. But, no seriously, I would request
that we try and see if this design will work and see it's performance and
usability and maintenance overheads before moving on to a newer design.

>>> Mapped pages:
>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>
>>> Basic premises:
>>>   - accounting per address_space/anon_vma
>>>
>> In the future, we also want to account for slab usage and page tables, etc.
>>
>>> Because, if the data is shared between containers isolation is broken anyway
>>> and we might as well charge them equally [1].
>>>
>>> Move the full reclaim structures from struct zone to these structures.
>>>
>>>
>>> 	struct reclaim;
>>>
>>> 	struct reclaim_zone {
>>> 		spinlock_t		lru_lock;
>>>
>>> 		struct list_head 	active;
>>> 		struct list_head 	inactive;
>>>
>>> 		unsigned long		nr_active;
>>> 		unsigned long		nr_inactive;
>>>
>>> 		struct reclaim		*reclaim;
>>> 	};
>>>
>>> 	struct reclaim {
>>> 		struct reclaim_zone	zone_reclaim[MAX_NR_ZONES];
>>>
>>> 		spinlock_t		containers_lock;
>>> 		struct list_head	containers;
>>> 		unsigned long		nr_containers;
>>> 	};
>>>
>>>
>>> 	struct address_space {
>>> 		...
>>> 		struct reclaim reclaim;
>>> 	};
>>>
>> Each address space has a struct reclaim? which inturn has a per zone reclaim
>> LRU list?
> 
> *nod*
> 

Won't this really bloat up used memory. I also worry about treating address_space
and anon_vma's as objects that manage and reclaim their own memory. Consider for
example a filesystem like sysfs, where each file is associated with a maximum
of one page (on an average).

>>> 	struct anon_vma {
>>> 		...
>>> 		struct reclaim reclaim;
>>> 	};
>>>
>> Same comment as above
> 
> indeed.
> 
>>> Then, on instantiation of either address_space or anon_vma we string together
>>> these reclaim domains with a reclaim scheduler.
>>>
>>>
>>> 	struct sched_item;
>>>
>>> 	struct reclaim_item {
>>> 		struct sched_item	sched_item;
>>> 		struct reclaim_zone	*reclaim_zone;
>>> 	};
>>>
>>>
>>> 	struct container {
>>> 		...
>>> 		struct sched_queue	reclaim_queue;
>>> 	};
>>>
>>>
>>> 	sched_enqueue(&container->reclaim_queue, &reclaim_item.sched_item);
>>>
>>>
>>> Then, shrink_zone() would use the appropriate containers' reclaim_queue
>>> to find an reclaim_item to run isolate_pages on.
>>>
>>>
>>> 	struct sched_item *si;
>>> 	struct reclaim_item *ri;
>>> 	struct reclaim_zone *rzone;
>>> 	LIST_HEAD(pages);
>>>
>>> 	si = sched_current(&container->reclaim_queue);
>>> 	ri = container_of(si, struct reclaim_item, sched_item); 
>>> 	rzone = ri->reclaim_zone;
>>> 	nr_scanned = isolate_pages(rzone, &pages);
>>>
>>> 	weight = (rzone->nr_active + rzone->nr_inactive) /
>>> 			(nr_scanned * rzone->reclaim->nr_containers);
>>>
>>> 	sched_account(&container->reclaim_queue,
>>> 			 &rzone->sched_item, weight);
>>>
>>>
>>> We use a scheduler to interleave the various lists instead of a sequence of
>>> lists to create the appearance of a single longer list. That is, we want each
>>> tail to be of equal age.
>>>
>>>  [ it would probably make sense to drive the shrinking of the active list
>>>    from the use of the inactive list. This has the advantage of 'hiding' 
>>>    the active list.
>>>
>>>    Much like proposed here: http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/12/7/57
>>>    and here: http://programming.kicks-ass.net/kernel-patches/page-replace/2.6.21-pr0/useonce-new-shrinker.patch
>>> ]
>>>
>> I worry about the scheduler approach. In a system with 100 containers, with 50 of them over their limit
>> and many sharing VMA's, how do we string together the container LRU list? What do we do on global
>> memory pressure?
> 
>                   h  h  h  h  h  h  h   (hot end)
> address_space     |  |  |  |  |  |  |  
>  lru lists        c  c  c  c  c  c  c   (cold end)
> 
> 
> global queue      *  *  *  *  *  *  *
> 
> container 1       *  *     *     *
> container 2          *  *    * 
> 
> 
> each reclaim context will iterate over all enqueued lists, taking a few
> elements off of each tail, scheduling them like 1/N owners.
> 
> 

This worries me a bit. On a per-zone LRU, pages would look like

	p1 <--> p2 <--> p3 <--> .... p(n)

Now each page has a unique age, but with a per-address-space or per-anon-vma the age
uniqueness is lost.


>>> Unmapped pages:
>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>
>>>
>>> Since unmapped pages lack a 'release' (or dis-associate) event, the fairest 
>>> thing is to account each container a fraction relative to its use of these
>>> unmapped pages.
>>>
>> Currently, we use the "page is reclaimed" event to mark the release event.
> 
> That is artificial, and only possible because you claim single
> ownership.
> 

Yes, the design aspects all weave in together :-)

> 
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-- 
	Warm Regards,
	Balbir Singh
	Linux Technology Center
	IBM, ISTL
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