mm: memcontrol: deprecate charge moving

BugLink: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2011425
commit da34a8484d162585e22ed8c1e4114aa2f60e3567 upstream.

Charge moving mode in cgroup1 allows memory to follow tasks as they
migrate between cgroups.  This is, and always has been, a questionable
thing to do - for several reasons.

First, it's expensive.  Pages need to be identified, locked and isolated
from various MM operations, and reassigned, one by one.

Second, it's unreliable.  Once pages are charged to a cgroup, there isn't
always a clear owner task anymore.  Cache isn't moved at all, for example.
Mapped memory is moved - but if trylocking or isolating a page fails,
it's arbitrarily left behind.  Frequent moving between domains may leave a
task's memory scattered all over the place.

Third, it isn't really needed.  Launcher tasks can kick off workload tasks
directly in their target cgroup.  Using dedicated per-workload groups
allows fine-grained policy adjustments - no need to move tasks and their
physical pages between control domains.  The feature was never
forward-ported to cgroup2, and it hasn't been missed.

Despite it being a niche usecase, the maintenance overhead of supporting
it is enormous.  Because pages are moved while they are live and subject
to various MM operations, the synchronization rules are complicated.
There are lock_page_memcg() in MM and FS code, which non-cgroup people
don't understand.  In some cases we've been able to shift code and cgroup
API calls around such that we can rely on native locking as much as
possible.  But that's fragile, and sometimes we need to hold MM locks for
longer than we otherwise would (pte lock e.g.).

Mark the feature deprecated. Hopefully we can remove it soon.

And backport into -stable kernels so that people who develop against
earlier kernels are warned about this deprecation as early as possible.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix memory.rst underlining]
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/Y5COd+qXwk/S+n8N@cmpxchg.org
Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Acked-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>
Acked-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Muchun Song <songmuchun@bytedance.com>
Cc: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <andrea.righi@canonical.com>

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/memory.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/memory.rst
index 60370f2c67b99c5541fb7de4cc99878833580174..258e45cc3b2db1866e005fbe2e7da09f5ed67195 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/memory.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/memory.rst
@@ -86,6 +86,8 @@ Brief summary of control files.
  memory.swappiness                  set/show swappiness parameter of vmscan
                                     (See sysctl's vm.swappiness)
  memory.move_charge_at_immigrate     set/show controls of moving charges
+                                     This knob is deprecated and shouldn't be
+                                     used.
  memory.oom_control                 set/show oom controls.
  memory.numa_stat                   show the number of memory usage per numa
                                     node
@@ -717,8 +719,15 @@ NOTE2:
        It is recommended to set the soft limit always below the hard limit,
        otherwise the hard limit will take precedence.
 
-8. Move charges at task migration
-=================================
+8. Move charges at task migration (DEPRECATED!)
+===============================================
+
+THIS IS DEPRECATED!
+
+It's expensive and unreliable! It's better practice to launch workload
+tasks directly from inside their target cgroup. Use dedicated workload
+cgroups to allow fine-grained policy adjustments without having to
+move physical pages between control domains.
 
 Users can move charges associated with a task along with task migration, that
 is, uncharge task's pages from the old cgroup and charge them to the new cgroup.

diff --git a/mm/memcontrol.c b/mm/memcontrol.c
index 73afff8062f9bf96b17dfae12fbe18091e215cda..2eee092f8f11906ec81659703cd7bc02fcf3c2e7 100644 (file)
--- a/mm/memcontrol.c
+++ b/mm/memcontrol.c
@@ -3914,6 +3914,10 @@ static int mem_cgroup_move_charge_write(struct cgroup_subsys_state *css,
 {
        struct mem_cgroup *memcg = mem_cgroup_from_css(css);
 
+       pr_warn_once("Cgroup memory moving (move_charge_at_immigrate) is deprecated. "
+                    "Please report your usecase to linux-mm@kvack.org if you "
+                    "depend on this functionality.\n");
+
        if (val & ~MOVE_MASK)
                return -EINVAL;