Re: [RFC 0/12] introduce down_write_killable for rw_semaphore

From: Michal Hocko
Date: Fri Feb 19 2016 - 07:15:16 EST


Are there any fundamenta lobjections to the patchset? I plan to resubmit
next week with the changes from the feedback along with the mmap_sem
down_write_killable usage.

On Tue 02-02-16 21:19:17, Michal Hocko wrote:
> Hi,
> the following patchset implements a killable variant of write lock for
> rw_semaphore. My usecase is to turn as many mmap_sem write users to use
> a killable variant which will be helpful for the oom_reaper [1] to
> asynchronously tear down the oom victim address space which requires
> mmap_sem for read. This will reduce a likelihood of OOM livelocks caused
> by oom victim being stuck on a lock or other resource which prevents it
> to reach its exit path and release the memory. I haven't implemented
> the killable variant of the read lock because I do not have any usecase
> for this API.
>
> The patchset is organized as follows.
> - Patch 1 is a trivial cleanup
> - Patch 2, I belive, shouldn't introduce any functional changes as per
> Documentation/memory-barriers.txt.
> - Patch 3 is the preparatory work and necessary infrastructure for
> down_write_killable. It implements generic __down_write_killable
> and prepares the write lock slow path to bail out earlier when told so
> - Patch 4-9 are implementing arch specific __down_write_killable. One
> patch per architecture. I haven't even tried to compile test anything but
> sparch which uses CONFIG_RWSEM_GENERIC_SPINLOCK in allnoconfig.
> Those shold be mostly trivial.
> - One exception is x86 which replaces the current implementation of
> __down_write with the generic one to make easier to read and get rid
> of one level of indirection to the slow path. More on that in patch 10.
> I do not have any problems to drop patch 10 and rework 11 to the current
> inline asm but I think the easier code would be better.
> - finally patch 11 implements down_write_killable and ties everything
> together. I am not really an expert on lockdep so I hope I got it right.
>
> Many of arch specific patches are basically same and I can squash them
> into one patch if this is preferred but I thought that one patch per
> arch is preferable.
>
> My patch to change mmap_sem write users to killable form is not part
> of the series because it is not finished yet but I guess it is not
> really necessary for the RFC. The API is used in the same way as
> mutex_lock_killable.
>
> I have tested on x86 with OOM situations with high mmap_sem contention
> (basically many parallel page faults racing with many parallel mmap/munmap
> tight loops) so the waiters for the write locks are routinely interrupted
> by SIGKILL.
>
> Patches should apply cleanly on both Linus and next tree.
>
> Any feedback is highly appreciated.
> ---
> [1] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1452094975-551-1-git-send-email-mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx

--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs
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