On Fri, May 06, 2011 at 08:42:24AM +0100, Mel Gorman wrote: > On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 09:22:33AM -0500, James Bottomley wrote: > > On Tue, 2011-05-03 at 09:13 -0500, James Bottomley wrote: > > > I've got a ftrace output of kswapd ... it's 500k compressed, so I'll > > > send under separate cover. > > > > Here it is ... it's under 2.6.38.4 vanilla, but the code is similar. > > > > I was quiet because I was off trying to reproduce this but not having > much luck. It doesn't seem directly related to filesystems or > cgroups. For example, here is what I see with ext4 without cgroups > > 2.6.34-vanilla 2.6.37-vanilla 2.6.38-vanilla rc6-vanilla > download tar 70 ( 0.00%) 68 ( 2.94%) 69 ( 1.45%) 70 ( 0.00%) > unpack tar 601 ( 0.00%) 605 (-0.66%) 604 (-0.50%) 605 (-0.66%) > copy source files 319 ( 0.00%) 321 (-0.62%) 320 (-0.31%) 332 (-3.92%) > create tarfile 1368 ( 0.00%) 1372 (-0.29%) 1371 (-0.22%) 1363 ( 0.37%) > delete source dirs 21 ( 0.00%) 21 ( 0.00%) 23 (-8.70%) 22 (-4.55%) > expand tar 263 ( 0.00%) 261 ( 0.77%) 257 ( 2.33%) 259 ( 1.54%) > > (all results are in seconds) > > When running in cgroups, the results are similar - bit slower but > not remarkably so. ext3 is slower but not enough to count as the bug. > > The trace you posted is very short but kswapd is not going to sleep > in it. It's less than a seconds worth on different cpus so it's hard > to draw any conclusion from it other than sleeping_prematurely() > is often deciding that kswapd should not sleep. > > So lets consider what keeps it awake. > > 1. High-order allocations? You machine is using i915 and RPC, something > neither of my test machine uses. i915 is potentially a source for > high-order allocations. I'm attaching a perl script. Please run it as > ./watch-highorder.pl --output /tmp/highorders.txt > while you are running tar. When kswapd is running for about 30 > seconds, interrupt it with ctrl+c twice in quick succession and > post /tmp/highorders.txt > > 2. All unreclaimable is not being set or we are not balancing at all. > Can you post the output of sysrq+m while the machine is struggling > please? > > 3. Slab may not be shrinking for some reason. Can you run a shell > script like this during the whole test and record its output please? > > #!/bin/bash > while [ 1 ]; do > echo time: `date +%s` > cat /proc/vmstat > sleep 2 > done > > Similarly if this is a slab issue, it'd be nice to know who it is so > > #!/bin/bash > while [ 1 ]; do > echo time: `date +%s` > cat /proc/slabinfo > sleep $MONITOR_UPDATE_FREQUENCY > done > > 4. Lets get a better look at what is going on in kswapd > > echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events/vmscan/enable > cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe > vmscan-ftrace.txt > Also, could you test the patch at https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/3/5/121 please? -- Mel Gorman SUSE Labs -- 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>