Workloads consisting of a large number of processes running the same program
with a very large shared data segment may experience performance problems 
when numa balancing attempts to migrate the shared cow pages. This manifests
itself with many processes or tasks in TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE state waiting
for the shared pages to be migrated.

The program listed below simulates the conditions with these results when 
run with 288 processes on a 144 core/8 socket machine.

Average throughput      Average throughput     Average throughput
with numa_balancing=0   with numa_balancing=1  with numa_balancing=1
                        without the patch      with the patch
---------------------   ---------------------  ---------------------
2118782                 2021534                2107979

Complex production environments show less variability and fewer poorly 
performing outliers accompanied with a smaller number of processes waiting 
on NUMA page migration with this patch applied. In some cases, %iowait drops 
from 16%-26% to 0.

// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
/*
 * Copyright (c) 2017 Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
 */
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <wait.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>

int a[1000000] = {13};

int  main(int argc, const char **argv)
{
        int n = 0;
        int i;
        pid_t pid;
        int stat;
        int *count_array;
        int cpu_count = 288;
        long total = 0;

        struct timeval t1, t2 = {(argc > 1 ? atoi(argv[1]) : 10), 0};

        if (argc > 2)
                cpu_count = atoi(argv[2]);

        count_array = mmap(NULL, cpu_count * sizeof(int),
                           (PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE),
                           (MAP_SHARED|MAP_ANONYMOUS), 0, 0);

        if (count_array == MAP_FAILED) {
                perror("mmap:");
                return 0;
        }


        for (i = 0; i < cpu_count; ++i) {
                pid = fork();
                if (pid <= 0)
                        break;
                if ((i & 0xf) == 0)
                        usleep(2);
        }

        if (pid != 0) {
                if (i == 0) {
                        perror("fork:");
                        return 0;
                }

                for (;;) {
                        pid = wait(&stat);
                        if (pid < 0)
                                break;
                }

                for (i = 0; i < cpu_count; ++i)
                        total += count_array[i];

                printf("Total %ld\n", total);
                munmap(count_array, cpu_count * sizeof(int));
                return 0;
        }

        gettimeofday(&t1, 0);
        timeradd(&t1, &t2, &t1);
        while (timercmp(&t2, &t1, <)) {
                int b = 0;
                int j;

                for (j = 0; j < 1000000; j++)
                        b += a[j];
                gettimeofday(&t2, 0);
                n++;
        }
        count_array[i] = n;
        return 0;
}

This patch changes change_pte_range() to skip shared copy-on-write pages when
called from change_prot_numa(). 

NOTE: change_prot_numa() is nominally called from task_numa_work() and
queue_pages_test_walk(). task_numa_work() is the auto NUMA balancing path, and
queue_pages_test_walk() is part of explicit NUMA policy management. However,
queue_pages_test_walk() only calls change_prot_numa() when MPOL_MF_LAZY is
specified and currently that is not allowed, so change_prot_numa() is only
called from auto NUMA balancing.

In the case of explicit NUMA policy management, shared pages are not migrated
unless MPOL_MF_MOVE_ALL is specified, and MPOL_MF_MOVE_ALL depends on
CAP_SYS_NICE. Currently, there is no way to pass information about
MPOL_MF_MOVE_ALL to change_pte_range. This will have to be fixed if
MPOL_MF_LAZY is enabled and MPOL_MF_MOVE_ALL is to be honored in lazy
migration mode.

task_numa_work() skips the read-only VMAs of programs and shared libraries.

V2:
- Combined patch and cover letter
- Added note about applicability of MPOL_MF_MOVE_ALL 

Signed-off-by: Henry Willard <henry.will...@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: HÃ¥kon Bugge <haakon.bu...@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Steve Sistare steven.sist...@oracle.com
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgor...@suse.de>
---
 mm/mprotect.c | 5 +++++
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)

diff --git a/mm/mprotect.c b/mm/mprotect.c
index ec39f730a0bf..fbbb3ab70818 100644
--- a/mm/mprotect.c
+++ b/mm/mprotect.c
@@ -84,6 +84,11 @@ static unsigned long change_pte_range(struct vm_area_struct 
*vma, pmd_t *pmd,
                                if (!page || PageKsm(page))
                                        continue;
 
+                               /* Also skip shared copy-on-write pages */
+                               if (is_cow_mapping(vma->vm_flags) &&
+                                   page_mapcount(page) != 1)
+                                       continue;
+
                                /* Avoid TLB flush if possible */
                                if (pte_protnone(oldpte))
                                        continue;
-- 
1.8.3.1

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