• ZhangPeng's avatar
    filemap: avoid unnecessary major faults in filemap_fault() · 58f327f2
    ZhangPeng authored
    A major fault occurred when using mlockall(MCL_CURRENT | MCL_FUTURE) in
    application, which leading to an unexpected issue[1].
    
    This is caused by temporarily cleared PTE during a read+clear/modify/write
    update of the PTE, eg, do_numa_page()/change_pte_range().
    
    For the data segment of the user-mode program, the global variable area is
    a private mapping.  After the pagecache is loaded, the private anonymous
    page is generated after the COW is triggered.  Mlockall can lock COW pages
    (anonymous pages), but the original file pages cannot be locked and may be
    reclaimed.  If the global variable (private anon page) is accessed when
    vmf->pte is zeroed in numa fault, a file page fault will be triggered.  At
    this time, the original private file page may have been reclaimed.  If the
    page cache is not available at this time, a major fault will be triggered
    and the file will be read, causing additional overhead.
    
    This issue affects our traffic analysis service.  The inbound traffic is
    heavy.  If a major fault occurs, the I/O schedule is triggered and the
    original I/O is suspended.  Generally, the I/O schedule is 0.7 ms.  If
    other applications are operating disks, the system needs to wait for more
    than 10 ms.  However, the inbound traffic is heavy and the NIC buffer is
    small.  As a result, packet loss occurs.  But the traffic analysis service
    can't tolerate packet loss.
    
    Fix this by holding PTL and rechecking the PTE in filemap_fault() before
    triggering a major fault.  We do this check only if vma is VM_LOCKED to
    reduce the performance impact in common scenarios.
    
    In our product environment, there were 7 major faults every 12 hours. 
    After the patch is applied, no major fault have been triggered.
    
    Testing file page read and write page fault performance in ext4 and
    ramdisk using will-it-scale[2] on a x86 physical machine.  The data is the
    average change compared with the mainline after the patch is applied.  The
    test results are within the range of fluctuation.  We do this check only
    if vma is VM_LOCKED, therefore, no performance regressions is caused for
    most common cases.
    
    The test results are as follows:
                              processes processes_idle  threads threads_idle
    ext4    private file write:  0.22%    0.26%           1.21%  -0.15%
    ext4    private file  read:  0.03%    1.00%           1.39%   0.34%
    ext4    shared  file write: -0.50%   -0.02%          -0.14%  -0.02%
    ramdisk private file write:  0.07%    0.02%           0.53%   0.04%
    ramdisk private file  read:  0.01%    1.60%          -0.32%  -0.02%
    
    [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/9e62fd9a-bee0-52bf-50a7-498fa17434ee@huawei.com/
    [2] https://github.com/antonblanchard/will-it-scale/
    
    Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240306083809.1236634-1-zhangpeng362@huawei.comSigned-off-by: default avatarZhangPeng <zhangpeng362@huawei.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarKefeng Wang <wangkefeng.wang@huawei.com>
    Suggested-by: default avatar"Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>
    Suggested-by: default avatarDavid Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatar"Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarDavid Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
    58f327f2
filemap.c 121 KB