On Fri, 13 May 2011 01:47:39 -0700 Greg Thelen <gthelen@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > This patch series provides the ability for each cgroup to have independent dirty > page usage limits. Limiting dirty memory fixes the max amount of dirty (hard to > reclaim) page cache used by a cgroup. This allows for better per cgroup memory > isolation and fewer ooms within a single cgroup. > > Having per cgroup dirty memory limits is not very interesting unless writeback > is cgroup aware. There is not much isolation if cgroups have to writeback data > from other cgroups to get below their dirty memory threshold. > > Per-memcg dirty limits are provided to support isolation and thus cross cgroup > inode sharing is not a priority. This allows the code be simpler. > > To add cgroup awareness to writeback, this series adds a memcg field to the > inode to allow writeback to isolate inodes for a particular cgroup. When an > inode is marked dirty, i_memcg is set to the current cgroup. When inode pages > are marked dirty the i_memcg field compared against the page's cgroup. If they > differ, then the inode is marked as shared by setting i_memcg to a special > shared value (zero). > > Previous discussions suggested that a per-bdi per-memcg b_dirty list was a good > way to assoicate inodes with a cgroup without having to add a field to struct > inode. I prototyped this approach but found that it involved more complex > writeback changes and had at least one major shortcoming: detection of when an > inode becomes shared by multiple cgroups. While such sharing is not expected to > be common, the system should gracefully handle it. > > balance_dirty_pages() calls mem_cgroup_balance_dirty_pages(), which checks the > dirty usage vs dirty thresholds for the current cgroup and its parents. If any > over-limit cgroups are found, they are marked in a global over-limit bitmap > (indexed by cgroup id) and the bdi flusher is awoke. > > The bdi flusher uses wb_check_background_flush() to check for any memcg over > their dirty limit. When performing per-memcg background writeback, > move_expired_inodes() walks per bdi b_dirty list using each inode's i_memcg and > the global over-limit memcg bitmap to determine if the inode should be written. > > If mem_cgroup_balance_dirty_pages() is unable to get below the dirty page > threshold writing per-memcg inodes, then downshifts to also writing shared > inodes (i_memcg=0). > > I know that there is some significant writeback changes associated with the > IO-less balance_dirty_pages() effort. I am not trying to derail that, so this > patch series is merely an RFC to get feedback on the design. There are probably > some subtle races in these patches. I have done moderate functional testing of > the newly proposed features. > > Here is an example of the memcg-oom that is avoided with this patch series: > # mkdir /dev/cgroup/memory/x > # echo 100M > /dev/cgroup/memory/x/memory.limit_in_bytes > # echo $$ > /dev/cgroup/memory/x/tasks > # dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/f1 bs=1k count=1M & > # dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/f2 bs=1k count=1M & > # wait > [1]- Killed dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/f1 bs=1M count=1k > [2]+ Killed dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/f1 bs=1M count=1k > > Known limitations: > If a dirty limit is lowered a cgroup may be over its limit. > Thank you, I think this should be merged earlier than all other works. Without this, I think all memory reclaim changes of memcg will do something wrong. I'll do a brief review today but I'll be busy until Wednesday, sorry. In general, I agree with inode->i_mapping->i_memcg, simple 2bytes field and ignoring a special case of shared inode between memcg. BTW, IIUC, i_memcg is resetted always when mark_inode_dirty() sets new I_DIRTY to the flags, right ? Thanks, -Kame -- 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>