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authorhttps://me.yahoo.com/a/g3Ccalpj0NhN566pHbUl6i9QF0QEkrhlfPM-#b1c14 <diana@web>2015-02-16 20:08:03 +0100
committerGNU Hurd web pages engine <web-hurd@gnu.org>2015-02-16 20:08:03 +0100
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tree847cf658ab3c3208a296202194b16a6550b243cf /open_issues/ext2fs_page_cache_swapping_leak.mdwn
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-[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2013 Free Software Foundation,
-Inc."]]
-
-[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
-id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
-document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
-any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
-Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license
-is included in the section entitled [[GNU Free Documentation
-License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
-
-[[!tag open_issue_gnumach open_issue_hurd]]
-
-There is a [[!FF_project 272]][[!tag bounty]] on this task.
-
-[[!toc]]
-
-
-# IRC, OFTC, #debian-hurd, 2011-03-24
-
- <youpi> I still believe we have an ext2fs page cache swapping leak, however
- <youpi> as the 1.8GiB swap was full, yet the ld process was only 1.5GiB big
- <pinotree> a leak at swapping time, you mean?
- <youpi> I mean the ext2fs page cache being swapped out instead of simply
- dropped
- <pinotree> ah
- <pinotree> so the swap tends to accumulate unuseful stuff, i see
- <youpi> yes
- <youpi> the disk content, basicallyt :)
-
-
-# IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-04-18
-
- <antrik> damn, a cp -a simply gobbles down swap space...
- <braunr> really ?
- <braunr> that's weird
- <braunr> why would a copy use so much anonymous memory ?
- <braunr> unless the external pager is so busy that the kernel falls back to
- its default pager
- <youpi> that's what I suggested some time ago
- <braunr> maybe this case should be traced in the kernel
- <braunr> a simple message in the kernel buffer to warn that this condition
- happened may help
- <youpi> I'm seeing swap space being kept used on buildds for no real reason
- except possibly backing ext2fs pages
- <youpi> that could help, yes
- <antrik> youpi: I think it was actually slpz who suggested that...
- <youpi> I think we're generally missing feedback from memory behavior
- <antrik> youpi: do you think andrei's kernel instrumentation work might be
- helpful with analyzing such things?
- <youpi> antrik: I think I suggested it too, but never mind
- <youpi> antrik: no, because it's not a trace of events that you want
- <youpi> some specific events would be useful
- <youpi> but then we don't really need a whole framework for that
- <antrik> apt-get upgrade eats swap too
- <youpi> the upgrade itself, or the computation of the ugprade?
- <youpi> apt is a memory eater nowadays
- <antrik> installing the packages
- <antrik> seems to have stabilized though after a while...
- <antrik> so perhaps it's not a leak in this case
- <youpi> ideally we should have a way to know what was put in the swap
- <braunr> how would you represent what's in the swap ?
- <antrik> the apt-get process has 46M of virtual memory above the 128 M
- baseline
- <braunr> mostly libraries i guess
- <braunr> are trheads stacks 8 MiB like on Linux ?
- <youpi> braunr: at least knowing how much of each process is in the swap
- <youpi> braunr: 2MiB
- <braunr> ok
- <youpi> vminfo could also report which parts of the address space are in
- the swap
- <antrik> youpi: would be nice to have some simple utility reporting how
- much of a process' address space is anonymous
- <antrik> (in fact, I wonder why it's not reported by standard tools such as
- ps or top... this shouldn't be too difficult I would think?)
- <antrik> it would be much more useful information than the total virt size,
- which includes rather meaningless disk and device mappings...
- <youpi> agreed
- <braunr> well
- <braunr> there are tools like pmap for this
- <braunr> unfortunately, it's difficult in mach to know what backs a
- non-anonymous mapping
- <braunr> pagers should be able to name their mappings
- <youpi> that'd be helpful for debugging yes
- <braunr> there is almost no overhead in doing that, and it would be very
- useful
- <youpi> and could lead to /proc/pid/maps
- <braunr> yes
- <braunr> isn't there a maps already ?
- <youpi> nope
- <braunr> ok
- <youpi> (probably not very useful without the names)
- <braunr> ithought i remembered maps without names, and guessed it might
- have been on the hurd for that reason
- <braunr> but i'm not sure
- <youpi> there's the vminfo command, yes
- <braunr> 14:06 < youpi> braunr: at least knowing how much of each process
- is in the swap
- <braunr> wouldn't it be clearer to do it the other way around ?
- <braunr> like a swapinfo tool indicating what it contains ?
- <youpi> sure, but it's a lot more difficult
- <braunr> really ?
- <braunr> why ?
- <youpi> because you have to traverse all the mappings
- <youpi> etc
- <youpi> (in all processes, I mean)
- <youpi> and you have to name what is waht
- <braunr> there are other ways
- <braunr> the swap is a central structure
- <youpi> while simply introducing the swap % in vminfo
- <youpi> for a given process you know what is what
- <braunr> right
- <youpi> and doing that introduction is probably very simple
- <braunr> that's a good point
- <braunr> top-down is effectively easier than bottom-up resolution in Mach
- VM
- <antrik> hm... the memory use caused by cp doesn't seem to be reflected in
- the virtual size of any particular process
- <antrik> ghost memory
- <braunr> what's cp vmsize at the time of the problem ?
- <antrik> it's at 134 M right now... so considering the 128 M baseline,
- nothing worth speaking of
- <braunr> right
- <braunr> maybe a copy map during I/O
- <braunr> but I don't know Mach copy maps in detail, as they have been
- eliminated from UVM
- <antrik> BTW, the memory eatup happens even before swap comes into
- play... swapping seems to be a result of the problem, not the cause
- <braunr> what do you mean ?
- <braunr> I thought swapping was the issue
- <braunr> you mean RAM is full before swapping ?
- <antrik> well, I don't know what the actual problem is... I just don't
- understand why the memory use increases without any particular process
- seeing an increase in size
- <antrik> the "free" size in vmstat decreses
- <antrik> once it's eatun up, swap space use increases
- <braunr> well it doesn't change much of it
- <braunr> the anonymous memory pager will use RAM before resorting to the
- external default-pager
- <antrik> I would suspect normal block caching... but then, shouldn't this
- show up in the memory info of the ext2 process?
- <braunr> although, again, I'm not sure of the behaviour of the anonymous
- memory pager
- <braunr> antrik: I don't know how block caching behaves
- <antrik> BTW, is it a know problem that doing ^C on a "cp -a" seems to hang
- the whole system?...
- <antrik> (the whole hurd instance that is... the other instance is not
- affected)
- <youpi> not that I know of
- <braunr> seems like a deadlock in the anonymous memory handling
- <youpi> (and I've never seen that)
- <antrik> happens both in my main system (using ancient hurd/libc) and in my
- subhurd (recently upgraded to current stuff)
- <antrik> this make testing this stuff quite a lot harder... [sigh]
- <antrik> any suggestions how to debug this hang?
- <braunr> antrik: no :/
-
-2011-04-28: [[!taglink open_issue_documentation]]
-
- <antrik> hm... is it normal that "swap free" doesn't increase as a process'
- memory is paged back in?
- <youpi> yes
- <youpi> there's no real use cleaning swap
- <youpi> on the contrary, it makes paging the process out again longer
- <antrik> hm... so essentially, after swapping back and forth a bit, a part
- of the swap equal to the size of physical RAM will be occupied with stuff
- that is actually in RAM?
- <youpi> yes
- <youpi> so that that RAM can be freed immediately if needed
- <antrik> hm... that means my effective swap size is only like 300 MB... no
- wonder I see crashes under load
- <antrik> err... make that 230 actually
- <antrik> indeed, quitting the application freed both the physical RAM and
- swap space
- <braunr> 02:28 < antrik> hm... is it normal that "swap free" doesn't
- increase as a process' memory is paged back in?
- <braunr> swap is the backing store of anonymous memory, like ext2fs is the
- backing store of memory objects created from its pager
- <braunr> so you can view swap as the file system for everything that isn't
- an external memory object
-
-
-# IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-11-15
-
- <braunr> hm, now my system got unstable
- <braunr> swap is increasing, without any apparent reason
- <antrik> you mean without any load?
- <braunr> with load, yes
- <braunr> :)
- <antrik> well, with load is "normal"...
- <antrik> at least for some loads
- <braunr> i can't create memory pressure to stress reclaiming without any
- load
- <antrik> what load are you using?
- <braunr> ftp mirrorring
- <antrik> hm... never tried that; but I guess it's similar to apt-get
- <antrik> so yes, that's "normal". I talked about it several times, and also
- wrote to the ML
- <braunr> antrik: ok
- <antrik> if you find out how to fix this, you are my hero ;-)
- <braunr> arg :)
- <antrik> I suspect it's the infamous double swapping problem; but that's
- just a guess
- <braunr> looks like this
- <antrik> BTW, if you give me the exact command, I could check if I see it
- too
- <braunr> i use lftp (mirror -Re) from a linux git repository
- <braunr> through sftp
- <braunr> (lots of small files, big content)
- <antrik> can't you just give me the exact command? I don't feel like
- figuring it out myself
- <braunr> antrik: cd linux-stable; lftp sftp://hurd_addr/
- <braunr> inside lftp: mkdir linux-stable; cd linux-stable; mirror -Re
- <braunr> hm, half of physical memory just got freed
- <braunr> our page cache is really weird :/
- <braunr> (i didn't delete any file when that happened)
- <antrik> hurd_addr?
- <braunr> ssh server ip address
- <braunr> or name
- <braunr> of your hurd :)
- <antrik> I'm confused. you are mirroring *from* the Hurd box?
- <braunr> no, to it
- <antrik> ah, so you login via sftp and then push to it?
- <braunr> yes
- <braunr> fragmentation looks very fine
- <braunr> even for the huge pv_entry cache and its 60k+ entries
- <braunr> (and i'm running a kernel with the cpu layer enabled)
- <braunr> git reset/status/diff/log/grep all work correctly
- <braunr> anyway, mcsim's branch looks quite stable to me
- <antrik> braunr: I can't reproduce the swap leak with ftp. free memory
- idles around 6.5 k (seems to be the threshold where paging starts), and
- swap use is constant
- <antrik> might be because everything swappable is already present in swap
- from previous load I guess...
- <antrik> err... scratch that. was connected to the wrong host, silly me
- <antrik> indeed swap gets eaten away, as expected
- <antrik> but only if free memory actually falls below the
- threshold. otherwise it just oscillates around a constant value, and
- never touches swap
- <antrik> so this seems to confirm the double swapping theory
- <youpi> antrik: is that "double swap" theory written somewhere?
- <youpi> (no, a quick google didn't tell me)
-
-
-## IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-11-16
-
- <antrik> youpi:
- http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/l4-hurd/2002-06/msg00001.html talks
- about "double paging". probably it's also the term others used for it;
- however, the term is generally used in a completely different meaning, so
- I guess it's not really suitable for googling either ;-)
- <antrik> IIRC slpz (or perhaps someone else?) proposed a solution to this,
- but I don't remember any details
- <youpi> ok so it's the same thing I was thinking about with swap getting
- filled
- <youpi> my question was: is there something to release the double swap,
- once the ext2fs pager managed to recover?
- <antrik> apparently not
- <antrik> the only way to free the memory seems to be terminating the FS
- server
- <youpi> uh :/
-
-
-# IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-11-30
-
- <antrik> slpz: basically, whenever free memory goes below the paging
- threshold (which seems to be around 6 MiB) while there is other I/O
- happening, swap usage begins to increase continuously; and only gets
- freed again when the filesystem translator in question exits
- <antrik> so it sounds *very* much like pages go to swap because the
- filesystem isn't quick enough to properly page them out
- <antrik> slpz: I think it was you who talked about double paging a while
- back?
- <slpz> antrik: probably, sounds like me :-)
- <antrik> slpz: I have some indication that the degenerating performance and
- ultimate hang issues I'm seeing are partially or entirely caused by
- double paging...
- <antrik> slpz: I don't remember, did you propose some possible fix?
- <slpz> antrik: hmm... perhaps it wasn't me, because I don't remember trying
- to fix that problem...
- <slpz> antrik: at which point do you think pages get duplicated?
- <antrik> slpz: it was a question. I don't remember whether you proposed
- something or not :-)
- <antrik> slpz: basically, whenever free memory goes below the paging
- threshold (which seems to be around 6 MiB) while there is other I/O
- happening, swap usage begins to increase continuously; and only gets
- freed again when the filesystem translator in question exits
- <antrik> so it sounds *very* much like pages go to swap because the
- filesystem isn't quick enough to properly page them out
- <slpz> antrik: I see
- <slpz> antrik: I didn't addressed this problem directly, but when I've
- modified the pageout mechanism to provide a special treatment for
- external pages, I also removed the possibility of sending them to the
- default pager
- <slpz> antrik: this was in my experimental environment, of course
- <antrik> slpz: oh, nice... so it may fix the issues I'm seeing? :-)
- <antrik> anything testable yet?
- <slpz> antrik: yes, only anonymous memory could be swapped with that
- <slpz> antrik: it works, but is ugly as hell
- <antrik> tschwinge: these is also your observation about compilations
- getting slower on further runs, and my followups... I *suspect* it's the
- same issue
-
-[[performance/degradation]].
-
- <slpz> antrik: I'm thinking about establishing a repository for these
- experimental versions, so they don't get lost with the time
- <antrik> slpz: please do :-)
- <slpz> antrik: perhaps in savannah's HARD project
- <antrik> even if it's not ready for upstream, it would be nice if I could
- test it -- right now it's bothering me more than any other Hurd issues I
- think...
- <slpz> also, there's another problem which causes performance degradation
- with the simple use of the system
- <tschwinge> slpz: Please just push to Savannah Hurd. Under your
- slpz/... or similar.
- <tschwinge> antrik: Might very well be, yes.
- <slpz> and I almost sure it is the fragmentation of the task map
- <slpz> tschwinge: ok
- <slpz> after playing a bit with a translator, it can easily get more than
- 3000 entries in its map
- <antrik> slpz: yeah, other issues might play a role here as well. I
- observed that terminating the problematic FS servers does free most of
- the memory and remove most of the performance degradation, but in some
- cases it's still very slow
- <slpz> that makes vm_map_lookup a lot slower
- <antrik> on a related note: any idea what can cause paging errors and a
- system hang even when there is plenty of free swap?
- <antrik> (I'm not entirely sure, but my impression is that it *might* be
- related to the swap usage and performance degradation problems)
- <slpz> I think this degree of fragmentation has something to do with the
- reiterative mapping of memory objects which is done in pager-memcpy.c
- <slpz> antrik: which kind of paging errors?
- <antrik> hm... I don't think I ever noted down the exact message; but I
- think it's the same you get when actually running out of swap
- <slpz> antrik: that could be the default pager dying for some internal bug
- <antrik> well, but it *seems* to go along with the performance degradation
- and/or swap usage
- <slpz> I also have the impression that we're using memory objects the wrong
- way
- <antrik> basically, once I get to a certain level of swap use and slowness
- (after about a month of use), the system eventually dies
- <slpz> antrik: I never had a system running for that time, so it could be a
- completely different problem from what I've seen before :-/
- <slpz> Anybody has experience with block-level caches on microkernel
- environments?
- <antrik> slpz: yeah, it typically happens after about a month of my normal
- use... but I can significantly accellerate it by putting some problematic
- load on it, such as large apt-get runs...
- <slpz> I wonder if it would be better to put them in kernel or in user
- space. And in the latter, if it would be better to have one per-device
- shared for all accesing translators, or just each task should have its
- own cache...
- <antrik> slpz:
- http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2011-09/msg00041.html is where
- I described the issue(s)
- <antrik> (should send another update for the most recent findings I
- guess...)
- <antrik> slpz: well, if we move to userspace drivers, the kernel part of
- the question is already answered ;-)
- <antrik> but I'm not sure about per-device cache vs. caching in FS server