On Sat 27-07-19 13:10:47, Waiman Long wrote: > It was found that a dying mm_struct where the owning task has exited > can stay on as active_mm of kernel threads as long as no other user > tasks run on those CPUs that use it as active_mm. This prolongs the > life time of dying mm holding up memory and other resources like swap > space that cannot be freed. IIRC use_mm doesn't pin the address space. It only pins the mm_struct itself. So what exactly is the problem here? > > Fix that by forcing the kernel threads to use init_mm as the active_mm > if the previous active_mm is dying. > > The determination of a dying mm is based on the absence of an owning > task. The selection of the owning task only happens with the CONFIG_MEMCG > option. Without that, there is no simple way to determine the life span > of a given mm. So it falls back to the old behavior. Please don't. We really wont to remove mm->owner long term. -- Michal Hocko SUSE Labs