From: Hui Zhu <[email protected]> BPF programs can observe memory pressure on a cgroup (e.g. refault stats via bpf_mem_cgroup_page_state()), but cannot act on it: triggering reclaim on a chosen cgroup requires writing to memory.reclaim, which BPF cannot do. This series adds bpf_proactive_reclaim(), a sleepable kfunc performing one proactive reclaim pass on a target memcg, so when and how hard to reclaim is BPF policy rather than hard-coded thresholds.
The kfunc is restricted to BPF_PROG_TYPE_SYSCALL so that reclaim always runs in a clean process context: generic sleepable programs may execute with filesystem locks held or in NOFS/NOIO contexts, where the reclaim path could deadlock in filesystem shrinkers. The bpf_wq and task_work callbacks of a SYSCALL program keep its program type and run in process context, so reclaim work can still be queued asynchronously through them, as the selftest does with bpf_wq. The use case we are looking at is protecting high-priority workloads: a BPF program monitors the state of a high-priority cgroup and, when it degrades (e.g. PSI rises or refaults increase, as in the selftest), asynchronously reclaims memory from low-priority cgroups via bpf_wq and bpf_proactive_reclaim(), giving the pressured cgroup more free pages. Another use case: several vendor-maintained kernels carry private implementations that trigger asynchronous reclaim when a memcg enters a certain state. These exist for historical and partly psychological reasons, but the underlying demand is real. We expect BPF-driven proactive reclaim, combined with the BPF hooks for the memory controller currently under discussion and development, to serve these needs in mainline, reducing kernel fragmentation and improving kernel maintainability. Changelog: v7: According to the comments of JP, clamp the reclaim target of one bpf_proactive_reclaim() call to MEMCG_CHARGE_BATCH so each call is a bounded unit of work, and document the batching policy in the kfunc. selftest: check the target cgroup for dying state before reclaiming from it, and add the memcg_async_reclaim_dying test covering target removal while reclaim is running. v6: According to the comments of Kumar and Shakeel, Restrict bpf_proactive_reclaim() to BPF_PROG_TYPE_SYSCALL by moving it to a dedicated kfunc set registered for that program type only, and document the clean-process-context requirement in its kerneldoc. v5: According to the comments of Andrii, Kumar and Shakeel, remove bpf_proactive_reclaim_swappiness. v4: According to the comments of bot+bpf-ci and sashiko, also check current->reclaim_state to close the fentry-on-trace-iter recursion window in bpf_in_reclaim_context. Return bytes instead of pages ( nr * PAGE_SIZE ) in bpf_proactive_reclaim_pages and bpf_proactive_reclaim_swappiness. Return (unsigned long)-1 on out-of-range swappiness (was 0). Kdoc of both kfuncs: updated Return descriptions; added FS-lock deadlock warning to bpf_proactive_reclaim. Fix potential child process leak in selftests. Use _exit() instead of exit() in forked children in selftests. Rename reclaimed_pages to reclaimed_bytes in selftests. Fix comments issues in selftests. v3: According to the comments of bot+bpf-ci, add a shared helper bpf_proactive_reclaim_pages() that is called by bpf_proactive_reclaim and bpf_proactive_reclaim_swappiness. According to the comments of sashiko and bot+bpf-ci, fix the issues of selftests. v2: According to the comments of Shakeel Butt, replace bpf_try_to_free_mem_cgroup_pages() with bpf_proactive_reclaim(memcg, size) and bpf_proactive_reclaim_swappiness(memcg, size, swappiness). According to the comments of Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi, drop patch 2 and patch 3. Remove bpf_thread_wq code in patch 4. According to the comments of sashiko-bot, fix the issues of selftests. Hui Zhu (2): mm/bpf: Add bpf_proactive_reclaim kfunc selftests/bpf: Add memcg async reclaim test mm/bpf_memcontrol.c | 95 ++- .../bpf/prog_tests/memcg_async_reclaim.c | 686 ++++++++++++++++++ .../selftests/bpf/progs/memcg_async_reclaim.c | 259 +++++++ 3 files changed, 1038 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/bpf/prog_tests/memcg_async_reclaim.c create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/bpf/progs/memcg_async_reclaim.c -- 2.53.0
