Re: [PATCH 00/11] x86, memblock: Allocate memory near kernel imagebefore SRAT parsed.

[Tang Chen]

Hi guys,

Any comment to this patch-set ?  And shall agree on using this solution
suggested by Tejun ?

Thanks.

On 08/27/2013 05:37 PM, Tang Chen wrote:
> This patch-set is based on tj's suggestion, and not fully tested.
> Just for review and discussion.
>
>
> [Problem]
>
> The current Linux cannot migrate pages used by the kerenl because
> of the kernel direct mapping. In Linux kernel space, va = pa + PAGE_OFFSET.
> When the pa is changed, we cannot simply update the pagetable and
> keep the va unmodified. So the kernel pages are not migratable.
>
> There are also some other issues will cause the kernel pages not migratable.
> For example, the physical address may be cached somewhere and will be used.
> It is not to update all the caches.
>
> When doing memory hotplug in Linux, we first migrate all the pages in one
> memory device somewhere else, and then remove the device. But if pages are
> used by the kernel, they are not migratable. As a result, memory used by
> the kernel cannot be hot-removed.
>
> Modifying the kernel direct mapping mechanism is too difficult to do. And
> it may cause the kernel performance down and unstable. So we use the following
> way to do memory hotplug.
>
>
> [What we are doing]
>
> In Linux, memory in one numa node is divided into several zones. One of the
> zones is ZONE_MOVABLE, which the kernel won't use.
>
> In order to implement memory hotplug in Linux, we are going to arrange all
> hotpluggable memory in ZONE_MOVABLE so that the kernel won't use these memory.
> To do this, we need ACPI's help.
>
> In ACPI, SRAT(System Resource Affinity Table) contains NUMA info. The memory
> affinities in SRAT record every memory range in the system, and also, flags
> specifying if the memory range is hotpluggable.
> (Please refer to ACPI spec 5.0 5.2.16)
>
> With the help of SRAT, we have to do the following two things to achieve our
> goal:
>
> 1. When doing memory hot-add, allow the users arranging hotpluggable as
>     ZONE_MOVABLE.
>     (This has been done by the MOVABLE_NODE functionality in Linux.)
>
> 2. when the system is booting, prevent bootmem allocator from allocating
>     hotpluggable memory for the kernel before the memory initialization
>     finishes.
>
> The problem 2 is the key problem we are going to solve. But before solving it,
> we need some preparation. Please see below.
>
>
> [Preparation]
>
> Bootloader has to load the kernel image into memory. And this memory must be
> unhotpluggable. We cannot prevent this anyway. So in a memory hotplug system,
> we can assume any node the kernel resides in is not hotpluggable.
>
> Before SRAT is parsed, we don't know which memory ranges are hotpluggable. But
> memblock has already started to work. In the current kernel, memblock allocates
> the following memory before SRAT is parsed:
>
> setup_arch()
>   |->memblock_x86_fill()            /* memblock is ready */
>   |......
>   |->early_reserve_e820_mpc_new()   /* allocate memory under 1MB */
>   |->reserve_real_mode()            /* allocate memory under 1MB */
>   |->init_mem_mapping()             /* allocate page tables, about 2MB to map 1GB memory */
>   |->dma_contiguous_reserve()       /* specified by user, should be low */
>   |->setup_log_buf()                /* specified by user, several mega bytes */
>   |->relocate_initrd()              /* could be large, but will be freed after boot, should reorder */
>   |->acpi_initrd_override()         /* several mega bytes */
>   |->reserve_crashkernel()          /* could be large, should reorder */
>   |......
>   |->initmem_init()                 /* Parse SRAT */
>
> According to Tejun's advice, before SRAT is parsed, we should try our best to
> allocate memory near the kernel image. Since the whole node the kernel resides
> in won't be hotpluggable, and for a modern server, a node may have at least 16GB
> memory, allocating several mega bytes memory around the kernel image won't cross
> to hotpluggable memory.
>
>
> [About this patch-set]
>
> So this patch-set does the following:
>
> 1. Make memblock be able to allocate memory from low address to high address.
>     Also introduce low limit to prevent memblock allocating memory too low.
>
> 2. Improve init_mem_mapping() to support allocate page tables from low address
>     to high address.
>
> 3. Introduce "movablenode" boot option to enable and disable this functionality.
>
> PS: Reordering of relocate_initrd() and reserve_crashkernel() has not been done
>      yet. acpi_initrd_override() needs to access initrd with virtual address. So
>      relocate_initrd() must be done before acpi_initrd_override().
>
>
> Tang Chen (11):
>    memblock: Rename current_limit to current_limit_high in memblock.
>    memblock: Rename memblock_set_current_limit() to
>      memblock_set_current_limit_high().
>    memblock: Introduce lowest limit in memblock.
>    memblock: Introduce memblock_set_current_limit_low() to set lower
>      limit of memblock.
>    memblock: Introduce allocation order to memblock.
>    memblock: Improve memblock to support allocation from lower address.
>    x86, memblock: Set lowest limit for memblock_alloc_base_nid().
>    x86, acpi, memblock: Use __memblock_alloc_base() in
>      acpi_initrd_override()
>    mem-hotplug: Introduce movablenode boot option to {en|dis}able using
>      SRAT.
>    x86, mem-hotplug: Support initialize page tables from low to high.
>    x86, mem_hotplug: Allocate memory near kernel image before SRAT is
>      parsed.
>
>   Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt |   15 ++++
>   arch/arm/mm/mmu.c                   |    2 +-
>   arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c                 |    4 +-
>   arch/microblaze/mm/init.c           |    2 +-
>   arch/powerpc/mm/40x_mmu.c           |    4 +-
>   arch/powerpc/mm/44x_mmu.c           |    2 +-
>   arch/powerpc/mm/fsl_booke_mmu.c     |    4 +-
>   arch/powerpc/mm/hash_utils_64.c     |    4 +-
>   arch/powerpc/mm/init_32.c           |    4 +-
>   arch/powerpc/mm/ppc_mmu_32.c        |    4 +-
>   arch/powerpc/mm/tlb_nohash.c        |    4 +-
>   arch/unicore32/mm/mmu.c             |    2 +-
>   arch/x86/kernel/setup.c             |   41 ++++++++++-
>   arch/x86/mm/init.c                  |  119 ++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
>   drivers/acpi/osl.c                  |    4 +-
>   include/linux/memblock.h            |   33 ++++++++--
>   include/linux/memory_hotplug.h      |    5 ++
>   mm/memblock.c                       |  131 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
>   mm/memory_hotplug.c                 |    9 +++
>   mm/nobootmem.c                      |    4 +-
>   20 files changed, 320 insertions(+), 77 deletions(-)
>
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