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Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages?

From Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Newsgroups linux.kernel
Subject Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages?
Date 2017-04-06 15:10 +0200
Message-ID <ttfkK-ux-23@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References <tt0lI-7Md-15@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization linux.* mail to news gateway

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On Wed, Apr 05, 2017 at 01:59:49PM -0700, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> Hi Mel,
> 
> I suspect that it's not safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages();
> but I haven't studied flush_work() etc, so don't really know what
> I'm talking about: hoping that you will jump to a realization.
> 

You're right, it's not safe. If kthreadd is creating the workqueue
thread to do the drain and it'll recurse into itself.

> 4.11-rc has been giving me hangs after hours of swapping load.  At
> first they looked like memory leaks ("fork: Cannot allocate memory");
> but for no good reason I happened to do "cat /proc/sys/vm/stat_refresh"
> before looking at /proc/meminfo one time, and the stat_refresh stuck
> in D state, waiting for completion of flush_work like many kworkers.
> kthreadd waiting for completion of flush_work in drain_all_pages().
> 

It's asking itself to do work in all likelihood.

> Patch below has been running well for 36 hours now:
> a bit too early to be sure, but I think it's time to turn to you.
> 

I think the patch is valid but like Michal, would appreciate if you
could run the patch he linked to see if it also side-steps the same
problem. 

Good spot!

-- 
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs

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Thread

Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> - 2017-04-05 23:10 +0200
  Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org> - 2017-04-06 11:00 +0200
  Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> - 2017-04-06 15:10 +0200
    Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> - 2017-04-06 21:00 +0200
      Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> - 2017-04-07 18:30 +0200
        Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org> - 2017-04-07 18:50 +0200
          Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> - 2017-04-07 19:00 +0200
            Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org> - 2017-04-07 19:30 +0200
              Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> - 2017-04-07 20:50 +0200
                Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> - 2017-04-08 19:10 +0200
                Re: Is it safe for kthreadd to drain_all_pages? Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> - 2017-04-08 20:10 +0200

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