[LTP] [PATCH 0/1] overcommit_memory: Remove unstable subtest

[Richard Palethorpe]

Hello,

Joerg Vehlow <lkml@jv-coder.de> writes:

> Hi,
>
> this is something like an RFC. (I think I mixed my thoughts
> between this and the patch description. Maybe read the patch
> description first).
> I found the overcommit_memory test, that tries to allocate
> all alocatable memory for overcommit policy never, failed 
> a lot and a lot more often, if the system has more memory.
> When looking at the kernel source I found the reason: 
> The percpu counter that counts the used memory uses a 
> counter for every cpu, if the allocation or deallocations 
> are very small. The more memory the system has, 
> the bigger "small" is defined. See mm_compute_batch.
>
> I started seeing this issue a lot after upgrading to 20200930
> comming from 20190115. Some changes in the framework may have
> led to this.
>
> I don't think this is a kernel bug, but a result from switching
> between overcommit modes. In overcommit mode never, the batch
> size is a lot smaller than in the other modes
> (ram_pages/cpus/256 instead of ra,_pages/cpus/4).
> This leads to allocations done before switching the mode to be
> accounted in the per cpu counters, and deallocated after in the
> global counter, making the global counter negative. If the
> overcommit mode was the same all the time, it should all have
> been accounted in the same counters and the global counter
> wouldn't be negative.
>
> Jörg

Possibly /proc/sys/vm/stat_refresh can be used to flush these counters
after changing the overcommit policy?

For reference see Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst.

I guess that if these counters turning negative is considered a bug then
a warning will be printed otherwise the test needs to be smarter.

-- 
Thank you,
Richard.