[Lustre-discuss] Lustre Client - Memory Issue

Andreas Dilger andreas.dilger at oracle.com
Thu Aug 26 18:49:54 PDT 2010


On 2010-08-26, at 18:42, Jagga Soorma wrote:
> I am still running into this issue on some nodes:
> 
> client109: ll_obdo_cache          0 152914489    208   19    1 : tunables  120   60    8 : slabdata      0 8048131      0
> client102: ll_obdo_cache          0 308526883    208   19    1 : tunables  120   60    8 : slabdata      0 16238257      0
> 
> How can I calculate how much memory this is holding on to.

If you do "head -1 /proc/slabinfo" it reports the column descriptions.

The "slabdata" will section reports numslabs=16238257, and pagesperslab=1, so tis is 16238257 pages of memory, or about 64GB of RAM on client102.  Ouch.

>  My system shows a lot of memory that is being used up but none of the jobs are using that much memory.  Also, these clients are running a smp sles 11 kernel but I can't find any /sys/kernel/slab directory.  
> 
> Linux client102 2.6.27.29-0.1-default #1 SMP 2009-08-15 17:53:59 +0200 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> 
> What makes you say that this does not look like a lustre memory leak?  I thought all the ll_* objects in slabinfo are lustre related?

It's true that the ll_obdo_cache objects are allocated by Lustre, but the above data shows 0 of those objects in use, so the kernel _should_ be freeing the unused slab objects.  This particular data type (obdo) is only ever in use temporarily during system calls on the client, and should never be allocated for a long time.

For some reason the kernel is not freeing the empty slab pages.  That is the responsibility of the kernel, and not Lustre.

>  To me it looks like lustre is holding on to this memory but I don't know much about lustre internals.
> 
> Also, memused on these systems are:
> 
> client102: 2353666940
> client109: 2421645924

This shows that Lustre is actively using about 2.4GB of memory allocations.  It is not tracking the 64GB of memory in the obdo_cache slab, because it has freed that memory (even though the kernel has not freed those pages).

> Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The only suggestion I have is that if you unmount Lustre and unload the modules (lustre_rmmod) it will free up this memory.  Otherwise, searching for problems with the slab cache on this kernel may turn up something.

> On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 8:08 AM, Dmitry Zogin <dmitry.zoguine at oracle.com> wrote:
> Hello Jagga,
> 
> I checked the data, and indeed this does not look like a lustre memory leak, rather than a slab fragmentation, which assumes there might be a kernel issue here. From the slabinfo (I only keep three first columns here):
> 
> 
> name            <active_objs> <num_objs>
> ll_obdo_cache          0 452282156    208
> 
> means that there are no active objects, but the memory pages are not released back from slab allocator to the free pool (the num value is huge). That looks like a slab fragmentation - you can get more description at 
> http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Slab_Defragmentation
> 
> Checking your mails, I wonder if this only happens on clients which have  SLES11 installed? As the RAM size is around 192Gb, I assume they are NUMA systems?
> If so, SLES11 has defrag_ratio tunables in /sys/kernel/slab/xxx
> From the source of get_any_partial()
> 
> #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
> 
>         /*
>          * The defrag ratio allows a configuration of the tradeoffs between
>          * inter node defragmentation and node local allocations. A lower
>          * defrag_ratio increases the tendency to do local allocations
>          * instead of attempting to obtain partial slabs from other nodes.
>          *
>          * If the defrag_ratio is set to 0 then kmalloc() always
>          * returns node local objects. If the ratio is higher then kmalloc()
>          * may return off node objects because partial slabs are obtained
>          * from other nodes and filled up.
>          *
>          * If /sys/kernel/slab/xx/defrag_ratio is set to 100 (which makes
>          * defrag_ratio = 1000) then every (well almost) allocation will
>          * first attempt to defrag slab caches on other nodes. This means
>          * scanning over all nodes to look for partial slabs which may be
>          * expensive if we do it every time we are trying to find a slab
>          * with available objects.
>          */
> 
> Could you please verify that your clients have defrag_ratio tunable and try to use various values?
> It looks like the value of 100 should be the best, unless there is a bug, then may be even 0 gets the desired result?
> 
> Best regards,
> Dmitry
> 
> 
> Jagga Soorma wrote:
>> Hi Johann,
>> 
>> I am actually using 1.8.1 and not 1.8.2:
>> 
>> # rpm -qa | grep -i lustre
>> lustre-client-1.8.1.1-2.6.27.29_0.1_lustre.1.8.1.1_default
>> lustre-client-modules-1.8.1.1-2.6.27.29_0.1_lustre.1.8.1.1_default
>> 
>> My kernel version on the SLES 11 clients is:
>> # uname -r
>> 2.6.27.29-0.1-default
>> 
>> My kernel version on the RHEL 5.3 mds/oss servers is:
>> # uname -r
>> 2.6.18-128.7.1.el5_lustre.1.8.1.1
>> 
>> Please let me know if you need any further information.  I am still trying to get the user to help me run his app so that I can run the leak finder script to capture more information.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> -Simran
>> 
>> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 7:20 AM, Johann Lombardi <johann at sun.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 09:08:25AM -0700, Jagga Soorma wrote:
>> > Thanks for your response.* I will try to run the leak-finder script and
>> > hopefully it will point us in the right direction.* This only seems to be
>> > happening on some of my clients:
>> 
>> Could you please tell us what kernel you use on the client side?
>> 
>> >    client104: ll_obdo_cache********* 0 433506280*** 208** 19*** 1 : tunables*
>> >    120** 60*** 8 : slabdata***** 0 22816120***** 0
>> >    client116: ll_obdo_cache********* 0 457366746*** 208** 19*** 1 : tunables*
>> >    120** 60*** 8 : slabdata***** 0 24071934***** 0
>> >    client113: ll_obdo_cache********* 0 456778867*** 208** 19*** 1 : tunables*
>> >    120** 60*** 8 : slabdata***** 0 24040993***** 0
>> >    client106: ll_obdo_cache********* 0 456372267*** 208** 19*** 1 : tunables*
>> >    120** 60*** 8 : slabdata***** 0 24019593***** 0
>> >    client115: ll_obdo_cache********* 0 449929310*** 208** 19*** 1 : tunables*
>> >    120** 60*** 8 : slabdata***** 0 23680490***** 0
>> >    client101: ll_obdo_cache********* 0 454318101*** 208** 19*** 1 : tunables*
>> >    120** 60*** 8 : slabdata***** 0 23911479***** 0
>> >    --
>> >
>> >    Hopefully this should help.* Not sure which application might be causing
>> >    the leaks.* Currently R is the only app that users seem to be using
>> >    heavily on these clients.* Will let you know what I find.
>> 
>> Tommi Tervo has filed a bugzilla ticket for this issue, see
>> https://bugzilla.lustre.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22701
>> 
>> Could you please add a comment to this ticket to describe the
>> behavior of the application "R" (fork many threads, write to
>> many files, use direct i/o, ...)?
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Johann
>> 
>> 
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>> 
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>> 
>>   
>> 
> 
> 


Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Lustre Technical Lead
Oracle Corporation Canada Inc.




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