mm: use global_dirty_limit in throttle_vm_writeout()
authorFengguang Wu <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:34:09 +0000 (16:34 -0700)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:54:58 +0000 (17:54 -0700)
When starting a memory hog task, a desktop box w/o swap is found to go
unresponsive for a long time.  It's solely caused by lots of congestion
waits in throttle_vm_writeout():

 gnome-system-mo-4201 553.073384: congestion_wait: throttle_vm_writeout+0x70/0x7f shrink_mem_cgroup_zone+0x48f/0x4a1
 gnome-system-mo-4201 553.073386: writeback_congestion_wait: usec_timeout=100000 usec_delayed=100000
           gtali-4237 553.080377: congestion_wait: throttle_vm_writeout+0x70/0x7f shrink_mem_cgroup_zone+0x48f/0x4a1
           gtali-4237 553.080378: writeback_congestion_wait: usec_timeout=100000 usec_delayed=100000
            Xorg-3483 553.103375: congestion_wait: throttle_vm_writeout+0x70/0x7f shrink_mem_cgroup_zone+0x48f/0x4a1
            Xorg-3483 553.103377: writeback_congestion_wait: usec_timeout=100000 usec_delayed=100000

The root cause is, the dirty threshold is knocked down a lot by the memory
hog task.  Fixed by using global_dirty_limit which decreases gradually on
such events and can guarantee we stay above (the also decreasing) nr_dirty
in the progress of following down to the new dirty threshold.

Signed-off-by: Fengguang Wu <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Greg Thelen <gthelen@google.com>
Cc: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
mm/page-writeback.c

index 363ba7082ef59efab5e90d94184cbf593aeff7ea..3fc261705b1e068c28c72a329f31ee431ae3fdc9 100644 (file)
@@ -1472,6 +1472,7 @@ void throttle_vm_writeout(gfp_t gfp_mask)
 
         for ( ; ; ) {
                global_dirty_limits(&background_thresh, &dirty_thresh);
+               dirty_thresh = hard_dirty_limit(dirty_thresh);
 
                 /*
                  * Boost the allowable dirty threshold a bit for page