GitLab

memcg reclaim may alter pgdat->flags based on the state of LRU lists in
cgroup and its children.  PGDAT_WRITEBACK may force kswapd to sleep
congested_wait(), PGDAT_DIRTY may force kswapd to writeback filesystem
pages.  But the worst here is PGDAT_CONGESTED, since it may force all
direct reclaims to stall in wait_iff_congested().  Note that only kswapd
have powers to clear any of these bits.  This might just never happen if
cgroup limits configured that way.  So all direct reclaims will stall as
long as we have some congested bdi in the system.

Leave all pgdat->flags manipulations to kswapd.  kswapd scans the whole
pgdat, only kswapd can clear pgdat->flags once node is balanced, thus
it's reasonable to leave all decisions about node state to kswapd.

Why only kswapd? Why not allow to global direct reclaim change these
flags? It is because currently only kswapd can clear these flags.  I'm
less worried about the case when PGDAT_CONGESTED falsely not s...