[008/127] mm/util.c: remove the VM_WARN_ONCE for vm_committed_as underflow check

Commit Message

Andrew Morton June 4, 2020, 11:46 p.m. UTC

From: Feng Tang <[e-mail]>
Subject: mm/util.c: remove the VM_WARN_ONCE for vm_committed_as underflow check

This check was added by 82f71ae4a2b8 ("mm: catch memory commitment
underflow") in 2014 to have a safety check for issues which have been
fixed.  And there has been few report caught by it, as described in its
commit log:

: This shouldn't happen any more - the previous two patches fixed
: the committed_as underflow issues.

But it was really found by Qian Cai when he used the LTP memory stress
suite to test a RFC patchset, which tries to improve scalability of
per-cpu counter 'vm_committed_as', by chosing a bigger 'batch' number for
loose overcommit policies (OVERCOMMIT_ALWAYS and OVERCOMMIT_GUESS), while
keeping current number for OVERCOMMIT_NEVER.

With that patchset, when system firstly uses a loose policy, the
'vm_committed_as' count could be a big negative value, as its big 'batch'
number allows a big deviation, then when the policy is changed to
OVERCOMMIT_NEVER, the 'batch' will be decreased to a much smaller value,
thus hits this WARN check.

To mitigate this, one proposed solution is to queue work on all online
CPUs to do a local sync for 'vm_committed_as' when changing policy to
OVERCOMMIT_NEVER, plus some global syncing to garante the case won't be
hit.

But this solution is costy and slow, given this check hasn't shown real
trouble or benefit, simply drop it from one hot path of MM.  And perf
stats does show some tiny saving for removing it.

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/[e-mail]
Signed-off-by: Feng Tang <[e-mail]>
Reported-by: Qian Cai <[e-mail]>
Reviewed-by: Qian Cai <[e-mail]>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <[e-mail]>
Cc: Konstantin Khlebnikov <[e-mail]>
Cc: Andi Kleen <[e-mail]>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <[e-mail]>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <[e-mail]>
Cc: Mel Gorman <[e-mail]>
Cc: Kees Cook <[e-mail]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[e-mail]>
---

 mm/util.c |    4 ----
 1 file changed, 4 deletions(-)

Patch

--- a/mm/util.c~mm-utilc-remove-the-vm_warn_once-for-vm_committed_as-underflow-check
+++ a/mm/util.c
@@ -796,10 +796,6 @@  int __vm_enough_memory(struct mm_struct
 {
 	long allowed;
 
-	VM_WARN_ONCE(percpu_counter_read(&vm_committed_as) <
-			-(s64)vm_committed_as_batch * num_online_cpus(),
-			"memory commitment underflow");
-
 	vm_acct_memory(pages);
 
 	/*