Le mercredi 13 avril 2011 Ã 14:16 -0700, Andrew Morton a Ãcrit : > So am I correct in believing that this regression is due to the > high-order allocations putting excess stress onto page reclaim? > I suppose so. > If so, then how large _are_ these allocations? This perhaps can be > determined from /proc/slabinfo. They must be pretty huge, because slub > likes to do excessively-large allocations and the system handles that > reasonably well. > > I suppose that a suitable fix would be > > > From: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > Azurit reports large increases in system time after 2.6.36 when running > Apache. It was bisected down to a892e2d7dcdfa6c76e6 ("vfs: use kmalloc() > to allocate fdmem if possible"). > > That patch caused the vfs to use kmalloc() for very large allocations and > this is causing excessive work (and presumably excessive reclaim) within > the page allocator. > > Fix it by falling back to vmalloc() earlier - when the allocation attempt > would have been considered "costly" by reclaim. > > Reported-by: azurIt <azurit@xxxxxxxx> > Cc: Changli Gao <xiaosuo@xxxxxxxxx> > Cc: Americo Wang <xiyou.wangcong@xxxxxxxxx> > Cc: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@xxxxxxx> > Cc: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@xxxxxxxxx> > Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx> > Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > --- > > fs/file.c | 17 ++++++++++------- > 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) > > diff -puN fs/file.c~a fs/file.c > --- a/fs/file.c~a > +++ a/fs/file.c > @@ -39,14 +39,17 @@ int sysctl_nr_open_max = 1024 * 1024; /* > */ > static DEFINE_PER_CPU(struct fdtable_defer, fdtable_defer_list); > > -static inline void *alloc_fdmem(unsigned int size) > +static void *alloc_fdmem(unsigned int size) > { > - void *data; > - > - data = kmalloc(size, GFP_KERNEL|__GFP_NOWARN); > - if (data != NULL) > - return data; > - > + /* > + * Very large allocations can stress page reclaim, so fall back to > + * vmalloc() if the allocation size will be considered "large" by the VM. > + */ > + if (size <= (PAGE_SIZE << PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER) { > + void *data = kmalloc(size, GFP_KERNEL|__GFP_NOWARN); > + if (data != NULL) > + return data; > + } > return vmalloc(size); > } > > _ > Acked-by: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@xxxxxxxxx> #define PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER 3 On x86_64, this means we try kmalloc() up to 4096 files in fdtable. Thanks ! -- 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/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx"> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>