Fwd: Re: kern/187594: [zfs] [patch] ZFS ARC behavior problem and fix

Karl Denninger karl at denninger.net
Wed Mar 19 18:09:30 UTC 2014


CC'ing the list on my PR followup; forgot to include it when submitted.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: kern/187594: [zfs] [patch] ZFS ARC behavior problem and fix
Date: 	Wed, 19 Mar 2014 13:03:30 -0500
From: 	Karl Denninger <karl at denninger.net>
To: 	bug-followup at FreeBSD.org, karl at fs.denninger.net



The 20% invasion of the first-level paging regime looks too aggressive
under very heavy load.  I have changed my system here to 10% (during runtime) and obtain
a materially-better response profile.

At 20% the system will still occasionally page recently-used executable
code to disk before cache is released which is undesirable.  10% looks
better but may STILL be too aggressive (in other words, 5% might be
"just right")

Being able to tune this in real time is a BIG help!

Adjusted patch follows (only a couple of lines have changed)

*** arc.c.original	Thu Mar 13 09:18:48 2014
--- arc.c	Wed Mar 19 13:01:48 2014
***************
*** 18,23 ****
--- 18,99 ----
     *
     * CDDL HEADER END
     */
+
+ /* Karl Denninger (karl at denninger.net), 3/18/2014, FreeBSD-specific
+  *
+  * If "NEWRECLAIM" is defined, change the "low memory" warning that causes
+  * the ARC cache to be pared down.  The reason for the change is that the
+  * apparent attempted algorithm is to start evicting ARC cache when free
+  * pages fall below 25% of installed RAM.  This maps reasonably well to how
+  * Solaris is documented to behave; when "lotsfree" is invaded ZFS is told
+  * to pare down.
+  *
+  * The problem is that on FreeBSD machines the system doesn't appear to be
+  * getting what the authors of the original code thought they were looking at
+  * with its test -- or at least not what Solaris did -- and as a result that
+  * test never triggers.  That leaves the only reclaim trigger as the "paging
+  * needed" status flag, and by the time * that trips the system is already
+  * in low-memory trouble.  This can lead to severe pathological behavior
+  * under the following scenario:
+  * - The system starts to page and ARC is evicted.
+  * - The system stops paging as ARC's eviction drops wired RAM a bit.
+  * - ARC starts increasing its allocation again, and wired memory grows.
+  * - A new image is activated, and the system once again attempts to page.
+  * - ARC starts to be evicted again.
+  * - Back to #2
+  *
+  * Note that ZFS's ARC default (unless you override it in /boot/loader.conf)
+  * is to allow the ARC cache to grab nearly all of free RAM, provided nobody
+  * else needs it.  That would be ok if we evicted cache when required.
+  *
+  * Unfortunately the system can get into a state where it never
+  * manages to page anything of materiality back in, as if there is active
+  * I/O the ARC will start grabbing space once again as soon as the memory
+  * contention state drops.  For this reason the "paging is occurring" flag
+  * should be the **last resort** condition for ARC eviction; you want to
+  * (as Solaris does) start when there is material free RAM left BUT the
+  * vm system thinks it needs to be active to steal pages back in the attempt
+  * to never get into the condition where you're potentially paging off
+  * executables in favor of leaving disk cache allocated.
+  *
+  * To fix this we change how we look at low memory, declaring two new
+  * runtime tunables.
+  *
+  * The new sysctls are:
+  * vfs.zfs.arc_freepages (free pages required to call RAM "sufficient")
+  * vfs.zfs.arc_freepage_percent (additional reservation percentage, default 0)
+  *
+  * vfs.zfs.arc_freepages is initialized from vm.stats.vm.v_free_target,
+  * less 10% if we find that it is zero.  Note that vm.stats.vm.v_free_target
+  * is not initialized at boot -- the system has to be running first, so we
+  * cannot initialize this in arc_init.  So we check during runtime; this
+  * also allows the user to return to defaults by setting it to zero.
+  *
+  * This should insure that we allow the VM system to steal pages first,
+  * but pare the cache before we suspend processes attempting to get more
+  * memory, thereby avoiding "stalls."  You can set this higher if you wish,
+  * or force a specific percentage reservation as well, but doing so may
+  * cause the cache to pare back while the VM system remains willing to
+  * allow "inactive" pages to accumulate.  The challenge is that image
+  * activation can force things into the page space on a repeated basis
+  * if you allow this level to be too small (the above pathological
+  * behavior); the defaults should avoid that behavior but the sysctls
+  * are exposed should your workload require adjustment.
+  *
+  * If we're using this check for low memory we are replacing the previous
+  * ones, including the oddball "random" reclaim that appears to fire far
+  * more often than it should.  We still trigger if the system pages.
+  *
+  * If you turn on NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG then the kernel will print on the console
+  * status messages when the reclaim status trips on and off, along with the
+  * page count aggregate that triggered it (and the free space) for each
+  * event.
+  */
+
+ #define	NEWRECLAIM
+ #undef	NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG
+
+
    /*
     * Copyright (c) 2005, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
     * Copyright (c) 2013 by Delphix. All rights reserved.
***************
*** 139,144 ****
--- 215,226 ----
    
    #include <vm/vm_pageout.h>
    
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM
+ #ifdef	__FreeBSD__
+ #include <sys/sysctl.h>
+ #endif
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM */
+
    #ifdef illumos
    #ifndef _KERNEL
    /* set with ZFS_DEBUG=watch, to enable watchpoints on frozen buffers */
***************
*** 203,218 ****
--- 285,320 ----
    int zfs_arc_shrink_shift = 0;
    int zfs_arc_p_min_shift = 0;
    int zfs_disable_dup_eviction = 0;
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM
+ #ifdef  __FreeBSD__
+ static	int freepages = 0;	/* This much memory is considered critical */
+ static	int percent_target = 0;	/* Additionally reserve "X" percent free RAM */
+ #endif	/* __FreeBSD__ */
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM */
    
    TUNABLE_QUAD("vfs.zfs.arc_max", &zfs_arc_max);
    TUNABLE_QUAD("vfs.zfs.arc_min", &zfs_arc_min);
    TUNABLE_QUAD("vfs.zfs.arc_meta_limit", &zfs_arc_meta_limit);
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM
+ #ifdef  __FreeBSD__
+ TUNABLE_INT("vfs.zfs.arc_freepages", &freepages);
+ TUNABLE_INT("vfs.zfs.arc_freepage_percent", &percent_target);
+ #endif	/* __FreeBSD__ */
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM */
+
    SYSCTL_DECL(_vfs_zfs);
    SYSCTL_UQUAD(_vfs_zfs, OID_AUTO, arc_max, CTLFLAG_RDTUN, &zfs_arc_max, 0,
        "Maximum ARC size");
    SYSCTL_UQUAD(_vfs_zfs, OID_AUTO, arc_min, CTLFLAG_RDTUN, &zfs_arc_min, 0,
        "Minimum ARC size");
    
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM
+ #ifdef  __FreeBSD__
+ SYSCTL_INT(_vfs_zfs, OID_AUTO, arc_freepages, CTLFLAG_RWTUN, &freepages, 0, "ARC Free RAM Pages Required");
+ SYSCTL_INT(_vfs_zfs, OID_AUTO, arc_freepage_percent, CTLFLAG_RWTUN, &percent_target, 0, "ARC Free RAM Target percentage");
+ #endif	/* __FreeBSD__ */
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM */
+
    /*
     * Note that buffers can be in one of 6 states:
     *	ARC_anon	- anonymous (discussed below)
***************
*** 2438,2443 ****
--- 2540,2557 ----
    {
    
    #ifdef _KERNEL
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM
+ #ifdef  __FreeBSD__
+ 	u_int	vmfree = 0;
+ 	u_int	vmtotal = 0;
+ 	size_t	vmsize;
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG
+ 	static	int	xval = -1;
+ 	static	int	oldpercent = 0;
+ 	static	int	oldfreepages = 0;
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG */
+ #endif	/* __FreeBSD__ */
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM */
    
    	if (needfree)
    		return (1);
***************
*** 2476,2481 ****
--- 2590,2596 ----
    		return (1);
    
    #if defined(__i386)
+
    	/*
    	 * If we're on an i386 platform, it's possible that we'll exhaust the
    	 * kernel heap space before we ever run out of available physical
***************
*** 2492,2502 ****
    		return (1);
    #endif
    #else	/* !sun */
    	if (kmem_used() > (kmem_size() * 3) / 4)
    		return (1);
    #endif	/* sun */
    
- #else
    	if (spa_get_random(100) == 0)
    		return (1);
    #endif
--- 2607,2680 ----
    		return (1);
    #endif
    #else	/* !sun */
+
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM
+ #ifdef  __FreeBSD__
+ /*
+  * Implement the new tunable free RAM algorithm.  We check the free pages
+  * against the minimum specified target and the percentage that should be
+  * free.  If we're low we ask for ARC cache shrinkage.  If this is defined
+  * on a FreeBSD system the older checks are not performed.
+  *
+  * Check first to see if we need to init freepages, then test.
+  */
+ 	if (!freepages) {		/* If zero then (re)init */
+ 		vmsize = sizeof(vmtotal);
+ 		kernel_sysctlbyname(curthread, "vm.stats.vm.v_free_target", &vmtotal, &vmsize, NULL, 0, NULL, 0);
+ 		freepages = vmtotal - (vmtotal / 10);
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG
+ 		printf("ZFS ARC: Default vfs.zfs.arc_freepages to [%u] [%u less 10%%]\n", freepages, vmtotal);
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG */
+ 	}
+
+ 	vmsize = sizeof(vmtotal);
+         kernel_sysctlbyname(curthread, "vm.stats.vm.v_page_count", &vmtotal, &vmsize, NULL, 0, NULL, 0);
+ 	vmsize = sizeof(vmfree);
+         kernel_sysctlbyname(curthread, "vm.stats.vm.v_free_count", &vmfree, &vmsize, NULL, 0, NULL, 0);
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG
+ 	if (percent_target != oldpercent) {
+ 		printf("ZFS ARC: Reservation percent change to [%d], [%d] pages, [%d] free\n", percent_target, vmtotal, vmfree);
+ 		oldpercent = percent_target;
+ 	}
+ 	if (freepages != oldfreepages) {
+ 		printf("ZFS ARC: Low RAM page change to [%d], [%d] pages, [%d] free\n", freepages, vmtotal, vmfree);
+ 		oldfreepages = freepages;
+ 	}
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG */
+ 	if (!vmtotal) {
+ 		vmtotal = 1;	/* Protect against divide by zero */
+ 				/* (should be impossible, but...) */
+ 	}
+ /*
+  * Now figure out how much free RAM we require to call the ARC cache status
+  * "ok".  Add the percentage specified of the total to the base requirement.
+  */
+
+ 	if (vmfree < freepages + ((vmtotal / 100) * percent_target)) {
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG
+ 		if (xval != 1) {
+ 			printf("ZFS ARC: RECLAIM total %u, free %u, free pct (%u), reserved (%u), target pct (%u)\n", vmtotal, vmfree, ((vmfree * 100) / vmtotal), freepages, percent_target);
+ 			xval = 1;
+ 		}
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG */
+ 		return(1);
+ 	} else {
+ #ifdef	NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG
+ 		if (xval != 0) {
+ 			printf("ZFS ARC: NORMAL total %u, free %u, free pct (%u), reserved (%u), target pct (%u)\n", vmtotal, vmfree, ((vmfree * 100) / vmtotal), freepages, percent_target);
+ 			xval = 0;
+ 		}
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM_DEBUG */
+ 		return(0);
+ 	}
+
+ #endif	/* __FreeBSD__ */
+ #endif	/* NEWRECLAIM */
+
    	if (kmem_used() > (kmem_size() * 3) / 4)
    		return (1);
    #endif	/* sun */
    
    	if (spa_get_random(100) == 0)
    		return (1);
    #endif


-- 
-- Karl
karl at denninger.net




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