• Vlastimil Babka's avatar
    mm, kswapd: remove bogus check of balance_classzone_idx · 81c5857b
    Vlastimil Babka authored
    During work on kcompactd integration I have spotted a confusing check of
    balance_classzone_idx, which I believe is bogus.
    
    The balanced_classzone_idx is filled by balance_pgdat() as the highest
    zone it attempted to balance.  This was introduced by commit dc83edd9
    ("mm: kswapd: use the classzone idx that kswapd was using for
    sleeping_prematurely()").
    
    The intention is that (as expressed in today's function names), the
    value used for kswapd_shrink_zone() calls in balance_pgdat() is the same
    as for the decisions in kswapd_try_to_sleep().
    
    An unwanted side-effect of that commit was breaking the checks in
    kswapd() whether there was another kswapd_wakeup with a tighter (=lower)
    classzone_idx.  Commits 215ddd66 ("mm: vmscan: only read
    new_classzone_idx from pgdat when reclaiming successfully") and
    d2ebd0f6 ("kswapd: avoid unnecessary rebalance after an unsuccessful
    balancing") tried to fixed, but apparently introduced a bogus check that
    this patch removes.
    
    Consider zone indexes X < Y < Z, where:
    - Z is the value used for the first kswapd wakeup.
    - Y is returned as balanced_classzone_idx, which means zones with index higher
      than Y (including Z) were found to be unreclaimable.
    - X is the value used for the second kswapd wakeup
    
    The new wakeup with value X means that kswapd is now supposed to balance
    harder all zones with index <= X.  But instead, due to Y < Z, it will go
    sleep and won't read the new value X.  This is subtly wrong.
    
    The effect of this patch is that kswapd will react better in some
    situations, where e.g.  the first wakeup is for ZONE_DMA32, the second is
    for ZONE_DMA, and due to unreclaimable ZONE_NORMAL.  Before this patch,
    kswapd would go sleep instead of reclaiming ZONE_DMA harder.  I expect
    these situations are very rare, and more value is in better
    maintainability due to the removal of confusing and bogus check.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarVlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
    Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
    Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>
    Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
    Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
    Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
    Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
    Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
    Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    81c5857b
vmscan.c 112 KB