Patch "mm/page_alloc: fix nodes for reclaim in fast path" has been added to the 4.10-stable tree

This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled

mm/page_alloc: fix nodes for reclaim in fast path

to the 4.10-stable tree which can be found at:
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary

The filename of the patch is:
mm-page_alloc-fix-nodes-for-reclaim-in-fast-path.patch
and it can be found in the queue-4.10 subdirectory.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <[email protected]> know about it.

From: Gavin Shan <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 14:59:33 -0800
Subject: mm/page_alloc: fix nodes for reclaim in fast path

From: Gavin Shan <[email protected]>

commit e02dc017c3032dcdce1b993af0db135462e1b4b7 upstream.

When @node_reclaim_node isn't 0, the page allocator tries to reclaim pages if the amount of free memory in the zones are below the low watermark. On Power platform, none of NUMA nodes are scanned for page reclaim because no nodes match the condition in zone_allows_reclaim(). On Power platform, RECLAIM_DISTANCE is set to 10 which is the distance of Node-A to Node-A. So the preferred node even won't be scanned for page reclaim.

__alloc_pages_nodemask()
get_page_from_freelist()
zone_allows_reclaim()

Anton proposed the test code as below:

   # cat alloc.c
      :
   int main(int argc, char *argv[])
   {
	void *p;
	unsigned long size;
	unsigned long start, end;

	start = time(NULL);
	size = strtoul(argv[1], NULL, 0);
	printf("To allocate %ldGB memory\n", size);

	size <<= 30;
	p = malloc(size);
	assert(p);
	memset(p, 0, size);

	end = time(NULL);
	printf("Used time: %ld seconds\n", end - start);
	sleep(3600);
	return 0;

}

The system I use for testing has two NUMA nodes. Both have 128GB memory. In below scnario, the page caches on node#0 should be reclaimed when it encounters pressure to accommodate request of allocation.

   # echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode; \
     sync; \
     echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches; \
   # taskset -c 0 cat file.32G > /dev/null; \
     grep FilePages /sys/devices/system/node/node0/meminfo
     Node 0 FilePages:       33619712 kB
   # taskset -c 0 ./alloc 128
   # grep FilePages /sys/devices/system/node/node0/meminfo
     Node 0 FilePages:       33619840 kB
   # grep MemFree /sys/devices/system/node/node0/meminfo
     Node 0 MemFree:          186816 kB

With the patch applied, the pagecache on node-0 is reclaimed when its free memory is running out. It's the expected behaviour.

   # echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode; \
     sync; \
     echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
   # taskset -c 0 cat file.32G > /dev/null; \
     grep FilePages /sys/devices/system/node/node0/meminfo
     Node 0 FilePages:       33605568 kB
   # taskset -c 0 ./alloc 128
   # grep FilePages /sys/devices/system/node/node0/meminfo
     Node 0 FilePages:        1379520 kB
   # grep MemFree /sys/devices/system/node/node0/meminfo
     Node 0 MemFree:           317120 kB

---
 mm/page_alloc.c |    2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

@@ -2877,7 +2877,7 @@ bool zone_watermark_ok_safe(struct zone
 #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
 static bool zone_allows_reclaim(struct zone *local_zone, struct zone *zone)
 {
-	return node_distance(zone_to_nid(local_zone), zone_to_nid(zone)) <
+	return node_distance(zone_to_nid(local_zone), zone_to_nid(zone)) <=
 				RECLAIM_DISTANCE;
 }
 #else	/* CONFIG_NUMA */

Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from [email protected] are

queue-4.10/mm-page_alloc-fix-nodes-for-reclaim-in-fast-path.patch