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Tetsuo Handa 400e22499d mm: don't warn about allocations which stall for too long
Commit 63f53dea0c ("mm: warn about allocations which stall for too
long") was a great step for reducing possibility of silent hang up
problem caused by memory allocation stalls.  But this commit reverts it,
for it is possible to trigger OOM lockup and/or soft lockups when many
threads concurrently called warn_alloc() (in order to warn about memory
allocation stalls) due to current implementation of printk(), and it is
difficult to obtain useful information due to limitation of synchronous
warning approach.

Current printk() implementation flushes all pending logs using the
context of a thread which called console_unlock().  printk() should be
able to flush all pending logs eventually unless somebody continues
appending to printk() buffer.

Since warn_alloc() started appending to printk() buffer while waiting
for oom_kill_process() to make forward progress when oom_kill_process()
is processing pending logs, it became possible for warn_alloc() to force
oom_kill_process() loop inside printk().  As a result, warn_alloc()
significantly increased possibility of preventing oom_kill_process()
from making forward progress.

---------- Pseudo code start ----------
Before warn_alloc() was introduced:

  retry:
    if (mutex_trylock(&oom_lock)) {
      while (atomic_read(&printk_pending_logs) > 0) {
        atomic_dec(&printk_pending_logs);
        print_one_log();
      }
      // Send SIGKILL here.
      mutex_unlock(&oom_lock)
    }
    goto retry;

After warn_alloc() was introduced:

  retry:
    if (mutex_trylock(&oom_lock)) {
      while (atomic_read(&printk_pending_logs) > 0) {
        atomic_dec(&printk_pending_logs);
        print_one_log();
      }
      // Send SIGKILL here.
      mutex_unlock(&oom_lock)
    } else if (waited_for_10seconds()) {
      atomic_inc(&printk_pending_logs);
    }
    goto retry;
---------- Pseudo code end ----------

Although waited_for_10seconds() becomes true once per 10 seconds,
unbounded number of threads can call waited_for_10seconds() at the same
time.  Also, since threads doing waited_for_10seconds() keep doing
almost busy loop, the thread doing print_one_log() can use little CPU
resource.  Therefore, this situation can be simplified like

---------- Pseudo code start ----------
  retry:
    if (mutex_trylock(&oom_lock)) {
      while (atomic_read(&printk_pending_logs) > 0) {
        atomic_dec(&printk_pending_logs);
        print_one_log();
      }
      // Send SIGKILL here.
      mutex_unlock(&oom_lock)
    } else {
      atomic_inc(&printk_pending_logs);
    }
    goto retry;
---------- Pseudo code end ----------

when printk() is called faster than print_one_log() can process a log.

One of possible mitigation would be to introduce a new lock in order to
make sure that no other series of printk() (either oom_kill_process() or
warn_alloc()) can append to printk() buffer when one series of printk()
(either oom_kill_process() or warn_alloc()) is already in progress.

Such serialization will also help obtaining kernel messages in readable
form.

---------- Pseudo code start ----------
  retry:
    if (mutex_trylock(&oom_lock)) {
      mutex_lock(&oom_printk_lock);
      while (atomic_read(&printk_pending_logs) > 0) {
        atomic_dec(&printk_pending_logs);
        print_one_log();
      }
      // Send SIGKILL here.
      mutex_unlock(&oom_printk_lock);
      mutex_unlock(&oom_lock)
    } else {
      if (mutex_trylock(&oom_printk_lock)) {
        atomic_inc(&printk_pending_logs);
        mutex_unlock(&oom_printk_lock);
      }
    }
    goto retry;
---------- Pseudo code end ----------

But this commit does not go that direction, for we don't want to
introduce a new lock dependency, and we unlikely be able to obtain
useful information even if we serialized oom_kill_process() and
warn_alloc().

Synchronous approach is prone to unexpected results (e.g.  too late [1],
too frequent [2], overlooked [3]).  As far as I know, warn_alloc() never
helped with providing information other than "something is going wrong".
I want to consider asynchronous approach which can obtain information
during stalls with possibly relevant threads (e.g.  the owner of
oom_lock and kswapd-like threads) and serve as a trigger for actions
(e.g.  turn on/off tracepoints, ask libvirt daemon to take a memory dump
of stalling KVM guest for diagnostic purpose).

This commit temporarily loses ability to report e.g.  OOM lockup due to
unable to invoke the OOM killer due to !__GFP_FS allocation request.
But asynchronous approach will be able to detect such situation and emit
warning.  Thus, let's remove warn_alloc().

[1] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=192981
[2] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/CAM_iQpWuPVGc2ky8M-9yukECtS+zKjiDasNymX7rMcBjBFyM_A@mail.gmail.com
[3] commit db73ee0d46 ("mm, vmscan: do not loop on too_many_isolated for ever"))

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1509017339-4802-1-git-send-email-penguin-kernel@I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp
Signed-off-by: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp>
Reported-by: Cong Wang <xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com>
Reported-by: yuwang.yuwang <yuwang.yuwang@alibaba-inc.com>
Reported-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>
Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2017-11-15 18:21:07 -08:00
Documentation mm, sysctl: make NUMA stats configurable 2017-11-15 18:21:07 -08:00
arch mm: remove cold parameter from free_hot_cold_page* 2017-11-15 18:21:06 -08:00
block block/blk-mq.c: use kmalloc_array_node() 2017-11-15 18:21:02 -08:00
certs License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
crypto kmemcheck: stop using GFP_NOTRACK and SLAB_NOTRACK 2017-11-15 18:21:04 -08:00
drivers mm: remove __GFP_COLD 2017-11-15 18:21:06 -08:00
firmware License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
fs fs: fuse: account fuse_inode slab memory as reclaimable 2017-11-15 18:21:07 -08:00
include mm, sysctl: make NUMA stats configurable 2017-11-15 18:21:07 -08:00
init kmemcheck: stop using GFP_NOTRACK and SLAB_NOTRACK 2017-11-15 18:21:04 -08:00
ipc License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
kernel mm, sysctl: make NUMA stats configurable 2017-11-15 18:21:07 -08:00
lib mm, truncate: do not check mapping for every page being truncated 2017-11-15 18:21:06 -08:00
mm mm: don't warn about allocations which stall for too long 2017-11-15 18:21:07 -08:00
net mm: remove __GFP_COLD 2017-11-15 18:21:06 -08:00
samples Merge branch 'for-linus' of ssh://gitolite.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/livepatching 2017-11-15 10:21:58 -08:00
scripts kmemcheck: rip it out 2017-11-15 18:21:05 -08:00
security Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2017-11-14 10:52:09 -08:00
sound sound updates for 4.15-rc1 2017-11-14 18:01:46 -08:00
tools mm: remove __GFP_COLD 2017-11-15 18:21:06 -08:00
usr initramfs: fix initramfs rebuilds w/ compression after disabling 2017-11-03 07:39:19 -07:00
virt arm64 updates for 4.15 2017-11-15 10:56:56 -08:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore .gitignore: move *.dtb and *.dtb.S patterns to the top-level .gitignore 2017-11-08 11:20:24 -06:00
.mailmap .mailmap: Add Maciej W. Rozycki's Imagination e-mail address 2017-11-10 12:16:15 -08:00
COPYING
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: update TPM driver infrastructure changes 2017-11-09 17:58:40 -08:00
Kbuild License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
Kconfig License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
MAINTAINERS kmemcheck: rip it out 2017-11-15 18:21:05 -08:00
Makefile RISC-V Port for Linux 4.15 v9 2017-11-15 10:49:15 -08:00
README README: add a new README file, pointing to the Documentation/ 2016-10-24 08:12:35 -02:00

README

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

This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst

Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users.
These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file.

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.