From: Chunxin Zang <zangchunxin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On our server, there are about 10k memcg in one machine. They use memory very frequently. We have observed that drop_caches can take a considerable amount of time, and can't stop it. There are two reasons: 1. There is somebody constantly generating more objects to reclaim on drop_caches, result the 'freed' always bigger than 10. 2. The process has no chance to process signals. We can get the following info through 'ps': root:~# ps -aux | grep drop root 357956 ... R Aug25 21119854:55 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches root 1771385 ... R Aug16 21146421:17 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches root 1986319 ... R 18:56 117:27 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches root 2002148 ... R Aug24 5720:39 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches root 2564666 ... R 18:59 113:58 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches root 2639347 ... R Sep03 2383:39 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches root 3904747 ... R 03:35 993:31 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches root 4016780 ... R Aug21 7882:18 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches Use bpftrace follow 'freed' value in drop_slab_node: root:~# bpftrace -e 'kprobe:drop_slab_node+70 {@ret=hist(reg("bp")); }' Attaching 1 probe... ^B^C @ret: [64, 128) 1 | | [128, 256) 28 | | [256, 512) 107 |@ | [512, 1K) 298 |@@@ | [1K, 2K) 613 |@@@@@@@ | [2K, 4K) 4435 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@| [4K, 8K) 442 |@@@@@ | [8K, 16K) 299 |@@@ | [16K, 32K) 100 |@ | [32K, 64K) 139 |@ | [64K, 128K) 56 | | [128K, 256K) 26 | | [256K, 512K) 2 | | We need one path to stop the process. Signed-off-by: Chunxin Zang <zangchunxin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Muchun Song <songmuchun@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- changelogs in v3: 1) update the description of the patch. v2 named: mm/vmscan: fix infinite loop in drop_slab_node changelogs in v2: 1) via check fatal signal break loop. mm/vmscan.c | 3 +++ 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c index b6d84326bdf2..6b2b5d420510 100644 --- a/mm/vmscan.c +++ b/mm/vmscan.c @@ -704,6 +704,9 @@ void drop_slab_node(int nid) do { struct mem_cgroup *memcg = NULL; + if (signal_pending(current)) + return; + freed = 0; memcg = mem_cgroup_iter(NULL, NULL, NULL); do { -- 2.11.0