While upgrading from 4.16 to 5.2, we noticed these allocation errors in
the log of the new kernel:
SLUB: Unable to allocate memory on node -1, gfp=0xa20(GFP_ATOMIC)
cache: tw_sock_TCPv6(960:helper-logs), object size: 232, buffer size: 240, default order: 1, min order: 0
node 0: slabs: 5, objs: 170, free: 0
slab_out_of_memory+1
___slab_alloc+969
__slab_alloc+14
kmem_cache_alloc+346
inet_twsk_alloc+60
tcp_time_wait+46
tcp_fin+206
tcp_data_queue+2034
tcp_rcv_state_process+784
tcp_v6_do_rcv+405
__release_sock+118
tcp_close+385
inet_release+46
__sock_release+55
sock_close+17
__fput+170
task_work_run+127
exit_to_usermode_loop+191
do_syscall_64+212
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+68
accompanied by an increase in machines going completely radio silent
under memory pressure.
One thing that changed since 4.16 is e699e2c6a6 ("net, mm: account
sock objects to kmemcg"), which made these slab caches subject to cgroup
memory accounting and control.
The problem with that is that cgroups, unlike the page allocator, do not
maintain dedicated atomic reserves. As a cgroup's usage hovers at its
limit, atomic allocations - such as done during network rx - can fail
consistently for extended periods of time. The kernel is not able to
operate under these conditions.
We don't want to revert the culprit patch, because it indeed tracks a
potentially substantial amount of memory used by a cgroup.
We also don't want to implement dedicated atomic reserves for cgroups.
There is no point in keeping a fixed margin of unused bytes in the
cgroup's memory budget to accomodate a consumer that is impossible to
predict - we'd be wasting memory and get into configuration headaches,
not unlike what we have going with min_free_kbytes. We do this for
physical mem because we have to, but cgroups are an accounting game.
Instead, account these privileged allocations to the cgroup, but let
them bypass the configured limit if they have to. This way, we get the
benefits of accounting the consumed memory and have it exert pressure on
the rest of the cgroup, but like with the page allocator, we shift the
burden of reclaimining on behalf of atomic allocations onto the regular
allocations that can block.
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20191022233708.365764-1-hannes@cmpxchg.org
Fixes: e699e2c6a6 ("net, mm: account sock objects to kmemcg")
Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Reviewed-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>
Cc: Suleiman Souhlal <suleiman@google.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org> [4.18+]
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
869712fd3d