unimore/kernel-hacking-2024-linux-steffo
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Linux kernel modifications for the Kernel Hacking exam
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Johannes Weiner 7b785645e8 mm: fix page cache convergence regression 
Since a283348629 ("page cache: Finish XArray conversion"), on most
major Linux distributions, the page cache doesn't correctly transition
when the hot data set is changing, and leaves the new pages thrashing
indefinitely instead of kicking out the cold ones.

On a freshly booted, freshly ssh'd into virtual machine with 1G RAM
running stock Arch Linux:

[root@ham ~]# ./reclaimtest.sh
+ dd of=workingset-a bs=1M count=0 seek=600
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ ./mincore workingset-a
153600/153600 workingset-a
+ dd of=workingset-b bs=1M count=0 seek=600
+ cat workingset-b
+ cat workingset-b
+ cat workingset-b
+ cat workingset-b
+ ./mincore workingset-a workingset-b
104029/153600 workingset-a
120086/153600 workingset-b
+ cat workingset-b
+ cat workingset-b
+ cat workingset-b
+ cat workingset-b
+ ./mincore workingset-a workingset-b
104029/153600 workingset-a
120268/153600 workingset-b

workingset-b is a 600M file on a 1G host that is otherwise entirely
idle. No matter how often it's being accessed, it won't get cached.

While investigating, I noticed that the non-resident information gets
aggressively reclaimed - /proc/vmstat::workingset_nodereclaim. This is
a problem because a workingset transition like this relies on the
non-resident information tracked in the page cache tree of evicted
file ranges: when the cache faults are refaults of recently evicted
cache, we challenge the existing active set, and that allows a new
workingset to establish itself.

Tracing the shrinker that maintains this memory revealed that all page
cache tree nodes were allocated to the root cgroup. This is a problem,
because 1) the shrinker sizes the amount of non-resident information
it keeps to the size of the cgroup's other memory and 2) on most major
Linux distributions, only kernel threads live in the root cgroup and
everything else gets put into services or session groups:

[root@ham ~]# cat /proc/self/cgroup
0::/user.slice/user-0.slice/session-c1.scope

As a result, we basically maintain no non-resident information for the
workloads running on the system, thus breaking the caching algorithm.

Looking through the code, I found the culprit in the above-mentioned
patch: when switching from the radix tree to xarray, it dropped the
__GFP_ACCOUNT flag from the tree node allocations - the flag that
makes sure the allocated memory gets charged to and tracked by the
cgroup of the calling process - in this case, the one doing the fault.

To fix this, allow xarray users to specify per-tree flag that makes
xarray allocate nodes using __GFP_ACCOUNT. Then restore the page cache
tree annotation to request such cgroup tracking for the cache nodes.

With this patch applied, the page cache correctly converges on new
workingsets again after just a few iterations:

[root@ham ~]# ./reclaimtest.sh
+ dd of=workingset-a bs=1M count=0 seek=600
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ cat workingset-a
+ ./mincore workingset-a
153600/153600 workingset-a
+ dd of=workingset-b bs=1M count=0 seek=600
+ cat workingset-b
+ ./mincore workingset-a workingset-b
124607/153600 workingset-a
87876/153600 workingset-b
+ cat workingset-b
+ ./mincore workingset-a workingset-b
81313/153600 workingset-a
133321/153600 workingset-b
+ cat workingset-b
+ ./mincore workingset-a workingset-b
63036/153600 workingset-a
153600/153600 workingset-b

Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # 4.20+
Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Reviewed-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@infradead.org>
2019-05-31 13:52:41 -04:00
arch arm64 fixes for -rc3 2019-05-30 21:05:23 -07:00
block blk-mq: fix hang caused by freeze/unfreeze sequence 2019-05-23 10:25:26 -06:00
certs treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX - rule 36 2019-05-24 17:27:11 +02:00
crypto treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX - rule 102 2019-05-24 17:39:00 +02:00
Documentation Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2019-05-30 21:11:22 -07:00
drivers Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2019-05-30 21:11:22 -07:00
fs mm: fix page cache convergence regression 2019-05-31 13:52:41 -04:00
include mm: fix page cache convergence regression 2019-05-31 13:52:41 -04:00
init treewide: Add SPDX license identifier - Makefile/Kconfig 2019-05-21 10:50:46 +02:00
ipc treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX - rule 52 2019-05-24 17:36:42 +02:00
kernel This fixes a memory leak from the error path in the event filter logic. 2019-05-29 11:26:40 -07:00
lib mm: fix page cache convergence regression 2019-05-31 13:52:41 -04:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Rename other to deprecated 2019-05-03 06:34:32 -06:00
mm treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX - rule 98 2019-05-24 17:37:54 +02:00
net Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2019-05-30 21:11:22 -07:00
samples treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX - rule 36 2019-05-24 17:27:11 +02:00
scripts The Sphinx 2.0 release contained a few incompatible API changes that broke 2019-05-29 14:36:41 -07:00
security SPDX update for 5.2-rc2, round 2 2019-05-24 14:31:58 -07:00
sound sound fixes for 5.2-rc3 2019-05-30 19:58:59 -07:00
tools Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2019-05-30 21:11:22 -07:00
usr user/Makefile: Fix typo and capitalization in comment section 2018-12-11 00:18:03 +09:00
virt The usual smattering of fixes and tunings that came in too late for the 2019-05-26 13:45:15 -07:00
.clang-format Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2019-04-17 11:26:25 -07:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes
.gitignore .gitignore: exclude .get_maintainer.ignore and .gitattributes 2019-05-18 11:49:54 +09:00
.mailmap A reasonably busy cycle for docs, including: 2019-05-08 12:42:50 -07:00
COPYING
CREDITS Char/Misc driver patches for 5.1-rc1 2019-03-06 14:18:59 -08:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v5.1 2019-03-10 17:48:21 -07:00
Kconfig kconfig: move the "Executable file formats" menu to fs/Kconfig.binfmt 2018-08-02 08:06:55 +09:00
MAINTAINERS The usual smattering of fixes and tunings that came in too late for the 2019-05-26 13:45:15 -07:00
Makefile Linux 5.2-rc2 2019-05-26 16:49:19 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

README 

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.