When file refaults are detected and there are many inactive file pages,
the system never reclaim anonymous pages, the file pages are dropped
aggressively when there are still a lot of cold anonymous pages and
system thrashes. This issue impacts the performance of applications
with large executable, e.g. chrome.
With this patch, when file refault is detected, inactive_list_is_low()
always returns true for file pages in get_scan_count() to enable
scanning anonymous pages.
The problem can be reproduced by the following test program.
---8<---
void fallocate_file(const char *filename, off_t size)
{
struct stat st;
int fd;
if (!stat(filename, &st) && st.st_size >= size)
return;
fd = open(filename, O_WRONLY | O_CREAT, 0600);
if (fd < 0) {
perror("create file");
exit(1);
}
if (posix_fallocate(fd, 0, size)) {
perror("fallocate");
exit(1);
}
close(fd);
}
long *alloc_anon(long size)
{
long *start = malloc(size);
memset(start, 1, size);
return start;
}
long access_file(const char *filename, long size, long rounds)
{
int fd, i;
volatile char *start1, *end1, *start2;
const int page_size = getpagesize();
long sum = 0;
fd = open(filename, O_RDONLY);
if (fd == -1) {
perror("open");
exit(1);
}
/*
* Some applications, e.g. chrome, use a lot of executable file
* pages, map some of the pages with PROT_EXEC flag to simulate
* the behavior.
*/
start1 = mmap(NULL, size / 2, PROT_READ | PROT_EXEC, MAP_SHARED,
fd, 0);
if (start1 == MAP_FAILED) {
perror("mmap");
exit(1);
}
end1 = start1 + size / 2;
start2 = mmap(NULL, size / 2, PROT_READ, MAP_SHARED, fd, size / 2);
if (start2 == MAP_FAILED) {
perror("mmap");
exit(1);
}
for (i = 0; i < rounds; ++i) {
struct timeval before, after;
volatile char *ptr1 = start1, *ptr2 = start2;
gettimeofday(&before, NULL);
for (; ptr1 < end1; ptr1 += page_size, ptr2 += page_size)
sum += *ptr1 + *ptr2;
gettimeofday(&after, NULL);
printf("File access time, round %d: %f (sec)
", i,
(after.tv_sec - before.tv_sec) +
(after.tv_usec - before.tv_usec) /
1000000.0);
}
return sum;
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
const long MB = 1024 * 1024;
long anon_mb, file_mb, file_rounds;
const char filename[] = "large";
long *ret1;
long ret2;
if (argc != 4) {
printf("usage: thrash ANON_MB FILE_MB FILE_ROUNDS
");
exit(0);
}
anon_mb = atoi(argv[1]);
file_mb = atoi(argv[2]);
file_rounds = atoi(argv[3]);
fallocate_file(filename, file_mb * MB);
printf("Allocate %ld MB anonymous pages
", anon_mb);
ret1 = alloc_anon(anon_mb * MB);
printf("Access %ld MB file pages
", file_mb);
ret2 = access_file(filename, file_mb * MB, file_rounds);
printf("Print result to prevent optimization: %ld
",
*ret1 + ret2);
return 0;
}
---8<---
Running the test program on 2GB RAM VM with kernel 5.2.0-rc5, the program
fills ram with 2048 MB memory, access a 200 MB file for 10 times. Without
this patch, the file cache is dropped aggresively and every access to the
file is from disk.
$ ./thrash 2048 200 10
Allocate 2048 MB anonymous pages
Access 200 MB file pages
File access time, round 0: 2.489316 (sec)
File access time, round 1: 2.581277 (sec)
File access time, round 2: 2.487624 (sec)
File access time, round 3: 2.449100 (sec)
File access time, round 4: 2.420423 (sec)
File access time, round 5: 2.343411 (sec)
File access time, round 6: 2.454833 (sec)
File access time, round 7: 2.483398 (sec)
File access time, round 8: 2.572701 (sec)
File access time, round 9: 2.493014 (sec)
With this patch, these file pages can be cached.
$ ./thrash 2048 200 10
Allocate 2048 MB anonymous pages
Access 200 MB file pages
File access time, round 0: 2.475189 (sec)
File access time, round 1: 2.440777 (sec)
File access time, round 2: 2.411671 (sec)
File access time, round 3: 1.955267 (sec)
File access time, round 4: 0.029924 (sec)
File access time, round 5: 0.000808 (sec)
File access time, round 6: 0.000771 (sec)
File access time, round 7: 0.000746 (sec)
File access time, round 8: 0.000738 (sec)
File access time, round 9: 0.000747 (sec)
Checked the swap out stats during the test [1], 19006 pages swapped out
with this patch, 3418 pages swapped out without this patch. There are
more swap out, but I think it's within reasonable range when file backed
data set doesn't fit into the memory.
$ ./thrash 2000 100 2100 5 1 # ANON_MB FILE_EXEC FILE_NOEXEC ROUNDS
PROCESSES Allocate 2000 MB anonymous pages active_anon:
1613644,
inactive_anon: 348656, active_file: 892, inactive_file: 1384 (kB)
pswpout:
7972443, pgpgin:
478615246 Access 100 MB executable file pages
Access 2100 MB regular file pages File access time, round 0: 12.165,
(sec) active_anon:
1433788, inactive_anon: 478116, active_file: 17896,
inactive_file: 24328 (kB) File access time, round 1: 11.493, (sec)
active_anon:
1430576, inactive_anon: 477144, active_file: 25440,
inactive_file: 26172 (kB) File access time, round 2: 11.455, (sec)
active_anon:
1427436, inactive_anon: 476060, active_file: 21112,
inactive_file: 28808 (kB) File access time, round 3: 11.454, (sec)
active_anon:
1420444, inactive_anon: 473632, active_file: 23216,
inactive_file: 35036 (kB) File access time, round 4: 11.479, (sec)
active_anon:
1413964, inactive_anon: 471460, active_file: 31728,
inactive_file: 32224 (kB) pswpout:
7991449 (+ 19006), pgpgin:
489924366
(+
11309120)
With 4 processes accessing non-overlapping parts of a large file, 30316
pages swapped out with this patch, 5152 pages swapped out without this
patch. The swapout number is small comparing to pgpgin.
[1]: https://github.com/vovo/testing/blob/master/mem_thrash.c
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190701081038.GA83398@google.com
Fixes: e9868505987a ("mm,vmscan: only evict file pages when we have plenty")
Fixes: 7c5bd705d8f9 ("mm: memcg: only evict file pages when we have plenty")
Signed-off-by: Kuo-Hsin Yang <vovoy@chromium.org>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Sonny Rao <sonnyrao@chromium.org>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov.dev@gmail.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org> [4.12+]
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>