On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:33:41 +0200 Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > drain_all_pages backs off when called from a kworker context since > 0ccce3b924212 ("mm, page_alloc: drain per-cpu pages from workqueue > context") because the original IPI based pcp draining has been replaced > by a WQ based one and the check wanted to prevent from recursion and > inter workers dependencies. This has made some sense at the time > because the system WQ has been used and one worker holding the lock > could be blocked while waiting for new workers to emerge which can be a > problem under OOM conditions. > > Since then ce612879ddc7 ("mm: move pcp and lru-pcp draining into single > wq") has moved draining to a dedicated (mm_percpu_wq) WQ with a rescuer > so we shouldn't depend on any other WQ activity to make a forward > progress so calling drain_all_pages from a worker context is safe as > long as this doesn't happen from mm_percpu_wq itself which is not the > case because all workers are required to _not_ depend on any MM locks. > > Why is this a problem in the first place? ACPI driven memory hot-remove > (acpi_device_hotplug) is executed from the worker context. We end > up calling __offline_pages to free all the pages and that requires > both lru_add_drain_all_cpuslocked and drain_all_pages to do their job > otherwise we can have dangling pages on pcp lists and fail the offline > operation (__test_page_isolated_in_pageblock would see a page with 0 > ref. count but without PageBuddy set). > > Fix the issue by removing the worker check in drain_all_pages. > lru_add_drain_all_cpuslocked doesn't have this restriction so it works > as expected. > > Fixes: 0ccce3b924212 ("mm, page_alloc: drain per-cpu pages from workqueue context") > Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx> No cc:stable? -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx"> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>