Re: 2.6.39-rc4+: Kernel leaking memory during FS scanning, regression?

[Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>]

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On Wed, 27 Apr 2011, Paul E. McKenney wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 12:06:11AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > On Wed, 27 Apr 2011, Bruno Prémont wrote:
> > > On Wed, 27 April 2011 Bruno Prémont wrote:
> > > Voluntary context switches stay constant from the time on SLABs pile up.
> > > (which makes sense as it doesn't run get CPU slices anymore)
> > > 
> > > > > Can you please enable CONFIG_SCHED_DEBUG and provide the output of
> > > > > /proc/sched_stat when the problem surfaces and a minute after the
> > > > > first snapshot?
> > > 
> > > hm, did you mean CONFIG_SCHEDSTAT or /proc/sched_debug?
> > > 
> > > I did use CONFIG_SCHED_DEBUG (and there is no /proc/sched_stat) so I took
> > > /proc/sched_debug which exists... (attached, taken about 7min and +1min
> > > after SLABs started piling up), though build processes were SIGSTOPped
> > > during first minute.
> > 
> > Oops. /proc/sched_debug is the right thing.
> > 
> > > printk wrote (in case its timestamp is useful, more below):
> > > [  518.480103] sched: RT throttling activated
> > 
> > Ok. Aside of the fact that the CPU time accounting is completely hosed
> > this is pointing to the root cause of the problem.
> > 
> > kthread_rcu seems to run in circles for whatever reason and the RT
> > throttler catches it. After that things go down the drain completely
> > as it should get on the CPU again after that 50ms throttling break.
> 
> Ah.  This could happen if there was a huge number of callbacks, in
> which case blimit would be set very large and kthread_rcu could then
> go CPU-bound.  And this workload was generating large numbers of
> callbacks due to filesystem operations, right?
> 
> So, perhaps I should kick kthread_rcu back to SCHED_NORMAL if blimit
> has been set high.  Or have some throttling of my own.  I must confess
> that throttling kthread_rcu for two hours seems a bit harsh.  ;-)

That's not the intended thing. See below.
 
> If this was just throttling kthread_rcu for a few hundred milliseconds,
> or even for a second or two, things would be just fine.
> 
> Left to myself, I will put together a patch that puts callback processing
> down to SCHED_NORMAL in the case where there are huge numbers of
> callbacks to be processed.

Well that's going to paper over the problem at hand possibly. I really
don't see why that thing would run for more than 950ms in a row even
if there is a large number of callbacks pending.

And then I don't have an explanation for the hosed CPU accounting and
why that thing does not get another 950ms RT time when the 50ms
throttling break is over.

Thanks,

	tglx