Baolin Wang 5699522643 mm: fix the inaccurate memory statistics issue for users
commit 82241a83cd15aaaf28200a40ad1a8b480012edaf upstream.

On some large machines with a high number of CPUs running a 64K pagesize
kernel, we found that the 'RES' field is always 0 displayed by the top
command for some processes, which will cause a lot of confusion for users.

    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
 875525 root      20   0   12480      0      0 R   0.3   0.0   0:00.08 top
      1 root      20   0  172800      0      0 S   0.0   0.0   0:04.52 systemd

The main reason is that the batch size of the percpu counter is quite
large on these machines, caching a significant percpu value, since
converting mm's rss stats into percpu_counter by commit f1a7941243 ("mm:
convert mm's rss stats into percpu_counter").  Intuitively, the batch
number should be optimized, but on some paths, performance may take
precedence over statistical accuracy.  Therefore, introducing a new
interface to add the percpu statistical count and display it to users,
which can remove the confusion.  In addition, this change is not expected
to be on a performance-critical path, so the modification should be
acceptable.

In addition, the 'mm->rss_stat' is updated by using add_mm_counter() and
dec/inc_mm_counter(), which are all wrappers around
percpu_counter_add_batch().  In percpu_counter_add_batch(), there is
percpu batch caching to avoid 'fbc->lock' contention.  This patch changes
task_mem() and task_statm() to get the accurate mm counters under the
'fbc->lock', but this should not exacerbate kernel 'mm->rss_stat' lock
contention due to the percpu batch caching of the mm counters.  The
following test also confirm the theoretical analysis.

I run the stress-ng that stresses anon page faults in 32 threads on my 32
cores machine, while simultaneously running a script that starts 32
threads to busy-loop pread each stress-ng thread's /proc/pid/status
interface.  From the following data, I did not observe any obvious impact
of this patch on the stress-ng tests.

w/o patch:
stress-ng: info:  [6848]          4,399,219,085,152 CPU Cycles          67.327 B/sec
stress-ng: info:  [6848]          1,616,524,844,832 Instructions          24.740 B/sec (0.367 instr. per cycle)
stress-ng: info:  [6848]          39,529,792 Page Faults Total           0.605 M/sec
stress-ng: info:  [6848]          39,529,792 Page Faults Minor           0.605 M/sec

w/patch:
stress-ng: info:  [2485]          4,462,440,381,856 CPU Cycles          68.382 B/sec
stress-ng: info:  [2485]          1,615,101,503,296 Instructions          24.750 B/sec (0.362 instr. per cycle)
stress-ng: info:  [2485]          39,439,232 Page Faults Total           0.604 M/sec
stress-ng: info:  [2485]          39,439,232 Page Faults Minor           0.604 M/sec

On comparing a very simple app which just allocates & touches some
memory against v6.1 (which doesn't have f1a7941243) and latest Linus
tree (4c06e63b9203) I can see that on latest Linus tree the values for
VmRSS, RssAnon and RssFile from /proc/self/status are all zeroes while
they do report values on v6.1 and a Linus tree with this patch.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/f4586b17f66f97c174f7fd1f8647374fdb53de1c.1749119050.git.baolin.wang@linux.alibaba.com
Fixes: f1a7941243 ("mm: convert mm's rss stats into percpu_counter")
Signed-off-by: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@linux.alibaba.com>
Reviewed-by: Aboorva Devarajan <aboorvad@linux.ibm.com>
Tested-by: Aboorva Devarajan <aboorvad@linux.ibm.com>
Tested-by Donet Tom <donettom@linux.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev>
Acked-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: Liam Howlett <liam.howlett@oracle.com>
Cc: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2025-07-17 18:35:14 +02:00
2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
2025-07-14 15:57:41 +02:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.
Description
No description provided
Readme 7.9 GiB
Languages
C 97.7%
Assembly 1.6%
Makefile 0.3%
Perl 0.1%