On Wed 25-03-15 02:17:08, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> Disabling the OOM killer needs to exclude allocators from entering,
> not existing victims from exiting.

The idea was that exit_oom_victim doesn't miss a waiter.

exit_oom_victim is doing
        atomic_dec_return(&oom_victims) && oom_killer_disabled)

so there is a full (implicit) memory barrier befor oom_killer_disabled
check. The other part is trickier. oom_killer_disable does:
        oom_killer_disabled = true;
        up_write(&oom_sem);

        wait_event(oom_victims_wait, !atomic_read(&oom_victims));

up_write doesn't guarantee a full memory barrier AFAICS in
Documentation/memory-barriers.txt (although the generic and x86
implementations seem to implement it as a full barrier) but wait_event
implies the full memory barrier (prepare_to_wait_event does spin
lock&unlock) before checking the condition in the slow path. This should
be sufficient and docummented...

        /*
         * We do not need to hold oom_sem here because oom_killer_disable
         * guarantees that oom_killer_disabled chage is visible before
         * the waiter is put into sleep (prepare_to_wait_event) so
         * we cannot miss a wake up.
         */

in unmark_oom_victim()

> Right now the only waiter is suspend code, which achieves quiescence
> by disabling the OOM killer.  But later on we want to add waits that
> hold the lock instead to stop new victims from showing up.

It is not entirely clear what you mean by this from the current context.
exit_oom_victim is not called from any context which would be locked by
any OOM internals so it should be safe to use the locking.

> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <han...@cmpxchg.org>

I have nothing against the change as it seems correct but it would be
good to get a better clarification and also document the implicit memory
barriers.

Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mho...@suse.cz>

> ---
>  mm/oom_kill.c | 2 --
>  1 file changed, 2 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/mm/oom_kill.c b/mm/oom_kill.c
> index 4b9547be9170..88aa9ba40fa5 100644
> --- a/mm/oom_kill.c
> +++ b/mm/oom_kill.c
> @@ -437,14 +437,12 @@ void exit_oom_victim(void)
>  {
>       clear_thread_flag(TIF_MEMDIE);
>  
> -     down_read(&oom_sem);
>       /*
>        * There is no need to signal the lasst oom_victim if there
>        * is nobody who cares.
>        */
>       if (!atomic_dec_return(&oom_victims) && oom_killer_disabled)
>               wake_up_all(&oom_victims_wait);
> -     up_read(&oom_sem);
>  }
>  
>  /**
> -- 
> 2.3.3
> 

-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs
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