vmscan.c: Reclaim unevictable pages.

From: Pankaj Suryawanshi
Date: Sat Apr 06 2019 - 02:05:06 EST


Hello ,

shrink_page_list() returns , number of pages reclaimed, when pages is
unevictable it returns VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(PageLRU(page) ||
PageUnevicatble(page),page);

We can add the unevictable pages in reclaim list in
shrink_page_list(), return total number of reclaim pages including
unevictable pages, let the caller handle unevictable pages.

I think the problem is shrink_page_list is awkard. If page is
unevictable it goto activate_locked->keep_locked->keep lables, keep
lable list_add the unevictable pages and throw the VM_BUG instead of
passing it to caller while it relies on caller for
non-reclaimed-non-unevictable page's putback.
I think we can make it consistent so that shrink_page_list could
return non-reclaimed pages via page_list and caller can handle it. As
an advance, it could try to migrate mlocked pages without retrial.


Below is the issue i observed of CMA_ALLOC of large size buffer :
(Kernel version - 4.14.65 With Android Pie.

[ 24.718792] page dumped because: VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(PageLRU(page) ||
PageUnevictable(page))
[ 24.726949] page->mem_cgroup:bd008c00
[ 24.730693] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[ 24.735304] kernel BUG at mm/vmscan.c:1350!
[ 24.739478] Internal error: Oops - BUG: 0 [#1] PREEMPT SMP ARM


Below is the patch which solved this issue :

diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index be56e2e..12ac353 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -998,7 +998,7 @@ static unsigned long shrink_page_list(struct
list_head *page_list,
sc->nr_scanned++;

if (unlikely(!page_evictable(page)))
- goto activate_locked;
+ goto cull_mlocked;

if (!sc->may_unmap && page_mapped(page))
goto keep_locked;
@@ -1331,7 +1331,12 @@ static unsigned long shrink_page_list(struct
list_head *page_list,
} else
list_add(&page->lru, &free_pages);
continue;
-
+cull_mlocked:
+ if (PageSwapCache(page))
+ try_to_free_swap(page);
+ unlock_page(page);
+ list_add(&page->lru, &ret_pages);
+ continue;
activate_locked:
/* Not a candidate for swapping, so reclaim swap space. */
if (PageSwapCache(page) && (mem_cgroup_swap_full(page) ||




It fixes the below issue.

1. Large size buffer allocation using cma_alloc successful with
unevictable pages.

cma_alloc of current kernel will fail due to unevictable page

Please let me know if anything i am missing.

Regards,
Pankaj