[Devel] [PATCH v11 15/15] memcg: flush memcg items upon memcg destruction

[Vladimir Davydov]

From: Glauber Costa <glommer at openvz.org>

When a memcg is destroyed, it won't be imediately released until all
objects are gone. This means that if a memcg is restarted with the very
same workload - a very common case, the objects already cached won't be
billed to the new memcg. This is mostly undesirable since a container
can exploit this by restarting itself every time it reaches its limit,
and then coming up again with a fresh new limit.

Since now we have targeted reclaim, I sustain that we should assume that
a memcg that is destroyed should be flushed away. It makes perfect sense
if we assume that a memcg that goes away most likely indicates an
isolated workload that is terminated.

Signed-off-by: Glauber Costa <glommer at openvz.org>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman at suse.de>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes at cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko at suse.cz>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd at google.com>
Cc: Kamezawa Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu at jp.fujitsu.com>
---
 mm/memcontrol.c |   17 +++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+)

diff --git a/mm/memcontrol.c b/mm/memcontrol.c
index 3533d33..471b544 100644
--- a/mm/memcontrol.c
+++ b/mm/memcontrol.c
@@ -6453,12 +6453,29 @@ static void memcg_destroy_kmem(struct mem_cgroup *memcg)
 
 static void kmem_cgroup_css_offline(struct mem_cgroup *memcg)
 {
+	int ret;
 	if (!memcg_kmem_is_active(memcg))
 		return;
 
 	cancel_work_sync(&memcg->kmemcg_shrink_work);
 
 	/*
+	 * When a memcg is destroyed, it won't be imediately released until all
+	 * objects are gone. This means that if a memcg is restarted with the
+	 * very same workload - a very common case, the objects already cached
+	 * won't be billed to the new memcg. This is mostly undesirable since a
+	 * container can exploit this by restarting itself every time it
+	 * reaches its limit, and then coming up again with a fresh new limit.
+	 *
+	 * Therefore a memcg that is destroyed should be flushed away. It makes
+	 * perfect sense if we assume that a memcg that goes away indicates an
+	 * isolated workload that is terminated.
+	 */
+	do {
+		ret = try_to_free_mem_cgroup_kmem(memcg, GFP_KERNEL);
+	} while (ret);
+
+	/*
 	 * kmem charges can outlive the cgroup. In the case of slab
 	 * pages, for instance, a page contain objects from various
 	 * processes. As we prevent from taking a reference for every
-- 
1.7.10.4