Re: [Intel-gfx] [PATCH] drm/i915: Selectively enable self-reclaim

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Wed Jun 30 2010 - 19:07:16 EST


On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Chris Wilson <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Reviewing the patch again, we no longer set the default gfpmask on the
> inode to contain NORETRY and instead add the NORETRY at the one spot in
> the code where we are trying to do a large allocation and our shrinker
> would be prevented from running (due to contention on struct_mutex).
>
> I do not know how this causes memory corruption across hibernate and would
> appreciate any insights.

Hmm. More likely is the __GFP_MOVABLE flag, I think.

That commit changes the page cache allocation to use

+ mapping_gfp_mask (mapping) |
+ __GFP_COLD |
+ gfpmask);

if I read it right. And the default mapping_gfp_mask() is
GFP_HIGHUSER_MOVABLE, so I think you get all of
(__GFP_WAIT | __GFP_IO | __GFP_FS | __GFP_HARDWALL | __GFP_HIGHMEM)
set by default.

The old code didn't just play games with ~__GFP_NORETRY and change
that at runtime (which was buggy - no locking, no protection, no
nothing), it also initialized the gfp mask. And that code also got
removed:

- /* Basically we want to disable the OOM killer and handle ENOMEM
- * ourselves by sacrificing pages from cached buffers.
- * XXX shmem_file_[gs]et_gfp_mask()
- */
- mapping_set_gfp_mask(obj->filp->f_path.dentry->d_inode->i_mapping,
- GFP_HIGHUSER |
- __GFP_COLD |
- __GFP_FS |
- __GFP_RECLAIMABLE |
- __GFP_NORETRY |
- __GFP_NOWARN |
- __GFP_NOMEMALLOC);

(and note how it doesn't have __GFP_MOVABLE set).

So I wonder if we shouldn't re-instate that mapping_set_gfp_mask() for
the _initial_ setting when the file descriptor is created. That part
wasn't the bug - the bug was the code that used to try to do that
whole per-allocation dance with the bits incorrectly (ie this part of
the change:

- gfp = i915_gem_object_get_page_gfp_mask(obj);
- i915_gem_object_set_page_gfp_mask(obj, gfp & ~__GFP_NORETRY);
- ret = i915_gem_object_get_pages(obj);
- i915_gem_object_set_page_gfp_mask (obj, gfp);

in that patch).

I could easily see that something would get very unhappy and corrupt
memory if the suspend-to-disk phase ends up compacting memory and
moving the pages around from under the i915 driver.

I dunno. But that seems more likely than the __GFP_NORETRY flag, which
should have no semantic meaning (except making it more likely for
allocations to fail, of course, but that's what the i915 code
_wanted_).

Linus
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/