On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 12:06:36PM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote: > Chris Mason <chris.mason@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > > Huh, 912 bytes...for select, really? From poll.h: > > > > /* ~832 bytes of stack space used max in sys_select/sys_poll before allocating > > additional memory. */ > > #define MAX_STACK_ALLOC 832 > > #define FRONTEND_STACK_ALLOC 256 > > #define SELECT_STACK_ALLOC FRONTEND_STACK_ALLOC > > #define POLL_STACK_ALLOC FRONTEND_STACK_ALLOC > > #define WQUEUES_STACK_ALLOC (MAX_STACK_ALLOC - FRONTEND_STACK_ALLOC) > > #define N_INLINE_POLL_ENTRIES (WQUEUES_STACK_ALLOC / sizeof(struct poll_table_entry)) > > > > So, select is intentionally trying to use that much stack. It should be using > > GFP_NOFS if it really wants to suck down that much stack... > > There are lots of other call chains which use multiple KB bytes by itself, > so why not give select() that measly 832 bytes? > > You think only file systems are allowed to use stack? :) Grin, most definitely. > > Basically if you cannot tolerate 1K (or more likely more) of stack > used before your fs is called you're toast in lots of other situations > anyways. Well, on a 4K stack kernel, 832 bytes is a very large percentage for just one function. Direct reclaim is a problem because it splices parts of the kernel that normally aren't connected together. The people that code in select see 832 bytes and say that's teeny, I should have taken 3832 bytes. But they don't realize their function can dive down into ecryptfs then the filesystem then maybe loop and then perhaps raid6 on top of a network block device. > > > kernel had some sort of way to dynamically allocate ram, it could try > > that too. > > It does this for large inputs, but the whole point of the stack fast > path is to avoid it for common cases when a small number of fds is > only needed. > > It's significantly slower to go to any external allocator. Yeah, but since the call chain does eventually go into the allocator, this function needs to be more stack friendly. I do agree that we can't really solve this with noinline_for_stack pixie dust, the long call chains are going to be a problem no matter what. Reading through all the comments so far, I think the short summary is: Cleaning pages in direct reclaim helps the VM because it is able to make sure that lumpy reclaim finds adjacent pages. This isn't a fast operation, it has to wait for IO (infinitely slow compared to the CPU). Will it be good enough for the VM if we add a hint to the bdi writeback threads to work on a general area of the file? The filesystem will get writepages(), the VM will get the IO it needs started. I know Mel mentioned before he wasn't interested in waiting for helper threads, but I don't see how we can work without it. -chris -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>