Re: [PATCH, RFC 00/10] THP refcounting redesign

[Vlastimil Babka]

On 06/09/2014 06:04 PM, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> We've discussed few times that is would be nice to allow huge pages to be
> mapped with 4k pages too. Here's my first attempt to actually implement
> this. It's early prototype and not stabilized yet, but I want to share it
> to discuss any potential show stoppers early.
>
> The main reason why we can't map THP with 4k is how refcounting on THP
> designed. It built around two requirements:
>
>    - split of huge page should never fail;
>    - we can't change interface of get_user_page();
>
> To be able to split huge page at any point we have to track which tail
> page was pinned. It leads to tricky and expensive get_page() on tail pages
> and also occupy tail_page->_mapcount.
>
> Most split_huge_page*() users want PMD to be split into table of PTEs and
> don't care whether compound page is going to be split or not.
>
> The plan is:
>
>   - allow split_huge_page() to fail if the page is pinned. It's trivial to
>     split non-pinned page and it doesn't require tail page refcounting, so
>     tail_page->_mapcount is free to be reused.
>
>   - introduce new routine -- split_huge_pmd() -- to split PMD into table of
>     PTEs. It splits only one PMD, not touching other PMDs the page is
>     mapped with or underlying compound page. Unlike new split_huge_page(),
>     split_huge_pmd() never fails.
>
> Fortunately, we have only few places where split_huge_page() is needed:
> swap out, memory failure, migration, KSM. And all of them can handle
> split_huge_page() fail.
>
> In new scheme we use tail_page->_mapcount is used to account how many time
> the tail page is mapped. head_page->_mapcount is used for both PMD mapping
> of whole huge page and PTE mapping of the firt 4k page of the compound
> page. It seems work fine, except the fact that we don't have a cheap way
> to check whether the page mapped with PMDs or not.
>
> Introducing split_huge_pmd() effectively allows THP to be mapped with 4k.
> It can break some kernel expectations. I.e. VMA now can start and end in
> middle of compound page. IIUC, it will break compactation and probably
> something else (any hints?).

I don't think compaction cares at all about VMA's. Unless the underlying 
page migration does. What will break is munlock due to 
VM_BUG_ON(PageTail(page)) in the PageTransHuge() check.

> Also munmap() on part of huge page will not split and free unmapped part
> immediately. We need to be careful here to keep memory footprint under
> control.

So who will take care of it, if it's not done immediately?

> As side effect we don't need to mark PMD splitting since we have
> split_huge_pmd(). get_page()/put_page() on tail of THP is cheaper (and
> cleaner) now.

But per patch 2, PageAnon() is more expensive. Also there are no side 
effects to this change?

> I will continue with stabilizing this. The patchset also available on
> git[1].
>
> Any commemnt?
>
> [1] git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kas/linux.git thp/refcounting/v1
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