How to handle TIF_MEMDIE stalls?

[Dave Chinner]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 09:54:30AM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 07:53:15AM -0500, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 09:23:26PM +0900, Tetsuo Handa wrote:
> > > --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> > > +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> > > @@ -2381,9 +2381,6 @@ __alloc_pages_may_oom(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
> > >                 /* The OOM killer does not needlessly kill tasks for lowmem */
> > >                 if (high_zoneidx < ZONE_NORMAL)
> > >                         goto out;
> > > -               /* The OOM killer does not compensate for light reclaim */
> > > -               if (!(gfp_mask & __GFP_FS))
> > > -                       goto out;
> > >                 /*
> > >                  * GFP_THISNODE contains __GFP_NORETRY and we never hit this.
> > >                  * Sanity check for bare calls of __GFP_THISNODE, not real OOM.
> > 
> > Again, we don't want to OOM kill on behalf of allocations that can't
> > initiate IO, or even actively prevent others from doing it.  Not per
> > default anyway, because most callers can deal with the failure without
> > having to resort to killing tasks, and NOFS reclaim *can* easily fail.
> > It's the exceptions that should be annotated instead:
> > 
> > void *
> > kmem_alloc(size_t size, xfs_km_flags_t flags)
> > {
> > 	int	retries = 0;
> > 	gfp_t	lflags = kmem_flags_convert(flags);
> > 	void	*ptr;
> > 
> > 	do {
> > 		ptr = kmalloc(size, lflags);
> > 		if (ptr || (flags & (KM_MAYFAIL|KM_NOSLEEP)))
> > 			return ptr;
> > 		if (!(++retries % 100))
> > 			xfs_err(NULL,
> > 		"possible memory allocation deadlock in %s (mode:0x%x)",
> > 					__func__, lflags);
> > 		congestion_wait(BLK_RW_ASYNC, HZ/50);
> > 	} while (1);
> > }
> > 
> > This should use __GFP_NOFAIL, which is not only designed to annotate
> > broken code like this, but also recognizes that endless looping on a
> > GFP_NOFS allocation needs the OOM killer after all to make progress.
> > 
> > diff --git a/fs/xfs/kmem.c b/fs/xfs/kmem.c
> > index a7a3a63bb360..17ced1805d3a 100644
> > --- a/fs/xfs/kmem.c
> > +++ b/fs/xfs/kmem.c
> > @@ -45,20 +45,12 @@ kmem_zalloc_greedy(size_t *size, size_t minsize, size_t maxsize)
> >  void *
> >  kmem_alloc(size_t size, xfs_km_flags_t flags)
> >  {
> > -	int	retries = 0;
> >  	gfp_t	lflags = kmem_flags_convert(flags);
> > -	void	*ptr;
> >  
> > -	do {
> > -		ptr = kmalloc(size, lflags);
> > -		if (ptr || (flags & (KM_MAYFAIL|KM_NOSLEEP)))
> > -			return ptr;
> > -		if (!(++retries % 100))
> > -			xfs_err(NULL,
> > -		"possible memory allocation deadlock in %s (mode:0x%x)",
> > -					__func__, lflags);
> > -		congestion_wait(BLK_RW_ASYNC, HZ/50);
> > -	} while (1);
> > +	if (!(flags & (KM_MAYFAIL | KM_NOSLEEP)))
> > +		lflags |= __GFP_NOFAIL;
> > +
> > +	return kmalloc(size, lflags);
> >  }
> 
> Hmmm - the only reason there is a focus on this loop is that it
> emits warnings about allocations failing. It's obvious that the
> problem being dealt with here is a fundamental design issue w.r.t.
> to locking and the OOM killer, but the proposed special casing
> hack^H^H^H^Hband aid^W^Wsolution is not "working" because some code
> in XFS started emitting warnings about allocations failing more
> often.
>
> So the answer is to remove the warning?  That's like killing the
> canary to stop the methane leak in the coal mine. No canary? No
> problems!

I'll also point out that there are two other identical allocation
loops in XFS, one of which is only 30 lines below this one. That's
further indication that this is a "silence the warning" patch rather
than something that actually fixes a problem....

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david at fromorbit.com