(2012/05/16 17:25), Glauber Costa wrote: > On 05/16/2012 12:18 PM, KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki wrote: >>> If at this point the memcg hits a NOFAIL allocation worth 2 pages, by >>>> the method I am using, the memcg will be at 4M + 4k after the >>>> allocation. Charging it to the root memcg will leave it at 4M - 4k. >>>> >>>> This means that to be able to allocate a page again, you need to free >>>> two other pages, be it the 2 pages used by the GFP allocation or any >>>> other. In other words: the memcg that originated the charge is held >>>> accountable for it. If he says it can't fail for whatever reason, fine, >>>> we respect that, but we punish it later for other allocations. >>>> >> I personally think 'we punish it later' is bad thing at resource accounting. >> We have 'hard limit'. It's not soft limit. > > That only makes sense if you will fail the allocation. If you won't, you > are over your hard limit anyway. You are just masquerading that. > 'showing usage > limit to user' and 'avoid accounting' is totally different user experience. >>>> Without that GFP_NOFAIL becomes just a nice way for people to bypass >>>> those controls altogether, since after a ton of GFP_NOFAIL allocations, >>>> normal allocations will still succeed. >>>> >> Allowing people to bypass is not bad because they're kernel. > > No, they are not. They are in process context, on behalf of a process > that belongs to a valid memcg. If they happen to be a kernel thread, > !current->mm test will send the allocation to the root memcg already. > Yes, but it's kernel code. There will be some special reason to use __GFP_NOFAIL. >> >> But, IIUC, from gfp.h >> == >> * __GFP_NOFAIL: The VM implementation_must_ retry infinitely: the caller >> * cannot handle allocation failures. This modifier is deprecated and no new >> * users should be added. >> == >> >> GFP_NOFAIL will go away and no new user is recommended. >> > Yes, I am aware of that. That's actually why I don't plan to insist on > this too much - although your e-mail didn't really convince me. > > It should not matter in practice. > >> So, please skip GFP_NOFAIL accounting and avoid to write >> "usage may go over limit if you're unfortune, sorry" into memcg documentation. > > I won't write that, because that's not true. Is more like: "Allocations > that can fail will fail if you go over limit". > >> >>>> The change you propose is totally doable. I just don't believe it should >>>> be done. >>>> >>>> But let me know where you stand. >>>> >> My stand point is keeping "usage<= limit" is the spec. and >> important in enterprise system. So, please avoid usage> limit. >> > As I said, I won't make a case here because those allocations shouldn't > matter in real life anyway. I can change it. > My standing point is that 'usage > limit' is bug. So please avoid it if __GFP_NOFAIL allocation is not very important. Thanks, -Kame -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. 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>