[Devel] [-mm PATCH 0/9] Memory controller introduction (v5)

[Balbir Singh]

Hi, Andrew,

Here's version 5 of the memory controller (against 2.6.23-rc1-mm1).

I've tested it and made several changes based on review comments from
several people in the community. I would consider this version as
ready for inclusion and thus request you to include it into the -mm tree.
Including it in the -mm tree would help

1. Iron out any major bugs
2. Get more review comments and testing in the community
3. Help it evolve iteratively

I do however that this version is *not* bug free, I am however committed
to fixing/resolving any issues reported against the patches/code.

Changelog since version 4

1. Renamed meta_page to page_container (Nick Piggin)
2. Moved locking from page flags to last bit of the page_container pointer
   (Nick Piggin)
3. Fixed a rare race in mem_container_isolate_pages (YAMAMOTO Takashi)

Changelog since version 3

1. Ported to v11 of the containers patchset (2.6.23-rc1-mm1). Paul Menage
   helped immensely with a detailed review of v3
2. Reclaim is retried to allow reclaim of pages coming in as a result
   of mapped pages reclaim (swap cache growing as a result of RSS reclaim)
3. page_referenced() is now container aware. During container reclaim,
   references from other containers do not prevent a page from being
   reclaimed from a non-referencing container
4. Fixed a possible race condition spotted by YAMAMOTO Takashi

Changelog since version 2

1. Improved error handling in mm/memory.c (spotted by YAMAMOTO Takashi)
2. Test results included
3. try_to_free_mem_container_pages() bug fix (sc->may_writepage is now
   set to !laptop_mode)

Changelog since version 1

1. Fixed some compile time errors (in mm/migrate.c from Vaidyanathan S)
2. Fixed a panic seen when LIST_DEBUG is enabled
3. Added a mechanism to control whether we track page cache or both
   page cache and mapped pages (as requested by Pavel)
4. Dave Hansen provided detail review comments on the code.

This patchset implements another version of the memory controller. These
patches have been through a big churn, the first set of patches were posted
last year and earlier this year at
	http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/19/10

This patchset draws from the patches listed above and from some of the
contents of the patches posted by Vaidyanathan for page cache control.
	http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/20/92

At OLS, the resource management BOF, it was discussed that we need to manage
RSS and unmapped page cache together. This patchset is a step towards that

TODO's

1. Add memory controller water mark support. Reclaim on high water mark
2. Add support for shrinking on limit change
3. Add per zone per container LRU lists (this is being actively worked
   on by Pavel Emelianov)
4. Figure out a better CLUI for the controller
5. Add better statistics
6. Explore using read_unit64() as recommended by Paul Menage
   (NOTE: read_ulong() would also be nice to have)

In case you have been using/testing the RSS controller, you'll find that
this controller works slower than the RSS controller. The reason being
that both swap cache and page cache is accounted for, so pages do go
out to swap upon reclaim (they cannot live in the swap cache).

Any test output, feedback, comments, suggestions are welcome! I am committed
to fixing any bugs and improving the performance of the memory controller.
Do not hesitate to send any fixes, request for fixes that is required.

Using the patches

1. Enable Memory controller configuration
2. Compile and boot the new kernel
3. mount -t container container -o memory /container
   will mount the memory controller to the /container mount point
4. mkdir /container/a
5. echo $$ > /container/a/tasks (add tasks to the new container)
6. echo -n <num_pages> > /container/a/memory.limit
   example
   echo -n 204800 > /container/a/memory.limit, sets the limit to 800 MB
   on a system with 4K page size
7. run tasks, see the memory controller work
8. Report results, provide feedback
9. Develop/use new patches and go to step 1

Test Results

Results for version 3 of the patch were posted at
http://lwn.net/Articles/242554/

The code was also tested on a power box with regular machine usage scenarios,
the config disabled and with a stress suite that touched all the memory
in the system and was limited in a container.

Documentation

An article describing the design of the memory controller is available
at http://lwn.net/Articles/243795/

Observations

You might find some pages left over after all tasks have exited the
container. Even a sync followed by echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
will not clean up all pages. The pages left behind are swap cache pages.
This problem can be easily solved by switching accounting to just
mapped pages. A mechanism to force all memory out of a container is
under investigation.

series

res_counters_infra.patch
mem-control-setup.patch
mem-control-accounting-setup.patch
mem-control-accounting.patch
mem-control-task-migration.patch
mem-control-lru-and-reclaim.patch
mem-control-out-of-memory.patch
mem-control-choose-rss-vs-rss-and-pagecache.patch
mem-control-per-container-page-referenced.patch

-- 
	Warm Regards,
	Balbir Singh
	Linux Technology Center
	IBM, ISTL
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