On Mon, Jul 29, 2019 at 05:07:28PM -0400, 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 some resources that cannot be freed
> on a mostly idle system.
>
> Fix that by forcing the kernel threads to use init_mm as the active_mm
> during a kernel thread to kernel thread transition if the previous
> active_mm is dying (!mm_users). This will allows the freeing of resources
> associated with the dying mm ASAP.
>
> The presence of a kernel-to-kernel thread transition indicates that
> the cpu is probably idling with no higher priority user task to run.
> So the overhead of loading the mm_users cacheline should not really
> matter in this case.
>
> My testing on an x86 system showed that the mm_struct was freed within
> seconds after the task exited instead of staying alive for minutes or
> even longer on a mostly idle system before this patch.
>
> Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> kernel/sched/core.c | 21 +++++++++++++++++++--
> 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c
> index 795077af4f1a..41997e676251 100644
> --- a/kernel/sched/core.c
> +++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
> @@ -3214,6 +3214,8 @@ static __always_inline struct rq *
> context_switch(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev,
> struct task_struct *next, struct rq_flags *rf)
> {
> + struct mm_struct *next_mm = next->mm;
> +
> prepare_task_switch(rq, prev, next);
>
> /*
> @@ -3229,8 +3231,22 @@ context_switch(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev,
> *
> * kernel -> user switch + mmdrop() active
> * user -> user switch
> + *
> + * kernel -> kernel and !prev->active_mm->mm_users:
> + * switch to init_mm + mmgrab() + mmdrop()
> */
> - if (!next->mm) { // to kernel
> + if (!next_mm) { // to kernel
> + /*
> + * Checking is only done on kernel -> kernel transition
> + * to avoid any performance overhead while user tasks
> + * are running.
> + */
> + if (unlikely(!prev->mm &&
> + !atomic_read(&prev->active_mm->mm_users))) {
> + next_mm = next->active_mm = &init_mm;
> + mmgrab(next_mm);
> + goto mm_switch;
> + }
> enter_lazy_tlb(prev->active_mm, next);
>
> next->active_mm = prev->active_mm;
So I _really_ hate this complication. I'm thinking if you really care
about this the time is much better spend getting rid of the active_mm
tracking for x86 entirely.
