On Tue 09-09-14 12:33:46, Neil Brown wrote: > On Thu, 4 Sep 2014 15:54:27 +0200 Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > > [Sorry for jumping in so late - I've been busy last days] > > > > On Wed 27-08-14 16:36:44, Mel Gorman wrote: > > > On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 08:00:20PM -0400, Trond Myklebust wrote: > > > > On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 7:51 PM, Trond Myklebust > > > > <trond.myklebust@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 7:19 PM, Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > [...] > > > > >> wait_on_page_writeback() is a hammer, and we need to be better about > > > > >> this once we have per-memcg dirty writeback and throttling, but I > > > > >> think that really misses the point. Even if memcg writeback waiting > > > > >> were smarter, any length of time spent waiting for yourself to make > > > > >> progress is absurd. We just shouldn't be solving deadlock scenarios > > > > >> through arbitrary timeouts on one side. If you can't wait for IO to > > > > >> finish, you shouldn't be passing __GFP_IO. > > > > Exactly! > > This is overly simplistic. > The code that cannot wait may be further up the call chain and not in a > position to avoid passing __GFP_IO. > In many case it isn't that "you can't wait for IO" in general, but that you > cannot wait for one specific IO request. Could you be more specific, please? Why would a particular IO make any difference to general IO from the same path? My understanding was that once the page is marked PG_writeback then it is about to be written to its destination and if there is any need for memory allocation it should better not allow IO from reclaim. > wait_on_page_writeback() waits for a specific IO and so is dangerous. > congestion_wait() or similar waits for IO in general and so is much safer. congestion_wait was actually not sufficient to prevent from OOM with heavy writer in a small memcg. We simply do not know how long will the IO last so any "wait for a random timeout" will end up causing some troubles. -- Michal Hocko SUSE Labs -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-nfs" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
