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author | Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@linux.alibaba.com> | 2025-06-05 20:58:29 +0800 |
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committer | Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> | 2025-07-09 21:07:55 -0700 |
commit | 82241a83cd15aaaf28200a40ad1a8b480012edaf (patch) | |
tree | 3b4da6c50ba1a6878eff4b3470bffa465621b513 /Documentation/filesystems/caching/backend-api.rst | |
parent | bd225b9591442065beb876da72656f4a2d627d03 (diff) |
mm: fix the inaccurate memory statistics issue for users
On some large machines with a high number of CPUs running a 64K pagesize
kernel, we found that the 'RES' field is always 0 displayed by the top
command for some processes, which will cause a lot of confusion for users.
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
875525 root 20 0 12480 0 0 R 0.3 0.0 0:00.08 top
1 root 20 0 172800 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:04.52 systemd
The main reason is that the batch size of the percpu counter is quite
large on these machines, caching a significant percpu value, since
converting mm's rss stats into percpu_counter by commit f1a7941243c1 ("mm:
convert mm's rss stats into percpu_counter"). Intuitively, the batch
number should be optimized, but on some paths, performance may take
precedence over statistical accuracy. Therefore, introducing a new
interface to add the percpu statistical count and display it to users,
which can remove the confusion. In addition, this change is not expected
to be on a performance-critical path, so the modification should be
acceptable.
In addition, the 'mm->rss_stat' is updated by using add_mm_counter() and
dec/inc_mm_counter(), which are all wrappers around
percpu_counter_add_batch(). In percpu_counter_add_batch(), there is
percpu batch caching to avoid 'fbc->lock' contention. This patch changes
task_mem() and task_statm() to get the accurate mm counters under the
'fbc->lock', but this should not exacerbate kernel 'mm->rss_stat' lock
contention due to the percpu batch caching of the mm counters. The
following test also confirm the theoretical analysis.
I run the stress-ng that stresses anon page faults in 32 threads on my 32
cores machine, while simultaneously running a script that starts 32
threads to busy-loop pread each stress-ng thread's /proc/pid/status
interface. From the following data, I did not observe any obvious impact
of this patch on the stress-ng tests.
w/o patch:
stress-ng: info: [6848] 4,399,219,085,152 CPU Cycles 67.327 B/sec
stress-ng: info: [6848] 1,616,524,844,832 Instructions 24.740 B/sec (0.367 instr. per cycle)
stress-ng: info: [6848] 39,529,792 Page Faults Total 0.605 M/sec
stress-ng: info: [6848] 39,529,792 Page Faults Minor 0.605 M/sec
w/patch:
stress-ng: info: [2485] 4,462,440,381,856 CPU Cycles 68.382 B/sec
stress-ng: info: [2485] 1,615,101,503,296 Instructions 24.750 B/sec (0.362 instr. per cycle)
stress-ng: info: [2485] 39,439,232 Page Faults Total 0.604 M/sec
stress-ng: info: [2485] 39,439,232 Page Faults Minor 0.604 M/sec
On comparing a very simple app which just allocates & touches some
memory against v6.1 (which doesn't have f1a7941243c1) and latest Linus
tree (4c06e63b9203) I can see that on latest Linus tree the values for
VmRSS, RssAnon and RssFile from /proc/self/status are all zeroes while
they do report values on v6.1 and a Linus tree with this patch.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/f4586b17f66f97c174f7fd1f8647374fdb53de1c.1749119050.git.baolin.wang@linux.alibaba.com
Fixes: f1a7941243c1 ("mm: convert mm's rss stats into percpu_counter")
Signed-off-by: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@linux.alibaba.com>
Reviewed-by: Aboorva Devarajan <aboorvad@linux.ibm.com>
Tested-by: Aboorva Devarajan <aboorvad@linux.ibm.com>
Tested-by Donet Tom <donettom@linux.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev>
Acked-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: Liam Howlett <liam.howlett@oracle.com>
Cc: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/caching/backend-api.rst')
0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions