Re: [PATCH v29 1/4] mm: support reporting free page blocks

[Andrew Morton]

On Mon, 26 Mar 2018 10:39:51 +0800 Wei Wang <wei.w.wang@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> This patch adds support to walk through the free page blocks in the
> system and report them via a callback function. Some page blocks may
> leave the free list after zone->lock is released, so it is the caller's
> responsibility to either detect or prevent the use of such pages.
> 
> One use example of this patch is to accelerate live migration by skipping
> the transfer of free pages reported from the guest. A popular method used
> by the hypervisor to track which part of memory is written during live
> migration is to write-protect all the guest memory. So, those pages that
> are reported as free pages but are written after the report function
> returns will be captured by the hypervisor, and they will be added to the
> next round of memory transfer.
> 
> ...
>
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -4912,6 +4912,102 @@ void show_free_areas(unsigned int filter, nodemask_t *nodemask)
>  	show_swap_cache_info();
>  }
>  
> +/*
> + * Walk through a free page list and report the found pfn range via the
> + * callback.
> + *
> + * Return 0 if it completes the reporting. Otherwise, return the non-zero
> + * value returned from the callback.
> + */
> +static int walk_free_page_list(void *opaque,
> +			       struct zone *zone,
> +			       int order,
> +			       enum migratetype mt,
> +			       int (*report_pfn_range)(void *,
> +						       unsigned long,
> +						       unsigned long))
> +{
> +	struct page *page;
> +	struct list_head *list;
> +	unsigned long pfn, flags;
> +	int ret = 0;
> +
> +	spin_lock_irqsave(&zone->lock, flags);
> +	list = &zone->free_area[order].free_list[mt];
> +	list_for_each_entry(page, list, lru) {
> +		pfn = page_to_pfn(page);
> +		ret = report_pfn_range(opaque, pfn, 1 << order);
> +		if (ret)
> +			break;
> +	}
> +	spin_unlock_irqrestore(&zone->lock, flags);
> +
> +	return ret;
> +}
> +
> +/**
> + * walk_free_mem_block - Walk through the free page blocks in the system
> + * @opaque: the context passed from the caller
> + * @min_order: the minimum order of free lists to check
> + * @report_pfn_range: the callback to report the pfn range of the free pages
> + *
> + * If the callback returns a non-zero value, stop iterating the list of free
> + * page blocks. Otherwise, continue to report.
> + *
> + * Please note that there are no locking guarantees for the callback and
> + * that the reported pfn range might be freed or disappear after the
> + * callback returns so the caller has to be very careful how it is used.
> + *
> + * The callback itself must not sleep or perform any operations which would
> + * require any memory allocations directly (not even GFP_NOWAIT/GFP_ATOMIC)
> + * or via any lock dependency. It is generally advisable to implement
> + * the callback as simple as possible and defer any heavy lifting to a
> + * different context.
> + *
> + * There is no guarantee that each free range will be reported only once
> + * during one walk_free_mem_block invocation.
> + *
> + * pfn_to_page on the given range is strongly discouraged and if there is
> + * an absolute need for that make sure to contact MM people to discuss
> + * potential problems.
> + *
> + * The function itself might sleep so it cannot be called from atomic
> + * contexts.

I don't see how walk_free_mem_block() can sleep.

> + * In general low orders tend to be very volatile and so it makes more
> + * sense to query larger ones first for various optimizations which like
> + * ballooning etc... This will reduce the overhead as well.
> + *
> + * Return 0 if it completes the reporting. Otherwise, return the non-zero
> + * value returned from the callback.
> + */
> +int walk_free_mem_block(void *opaque,
> +			int min_order,
> +			int (*report_pfn_range)(void *opaque,
> +			unsigned long pfn,
> +			unsigned long num))
> +{
> +	struct zone *zone;
> +	int order;
> +	enum migratetype mt;
> +	int ret;
> +
> +	for_each_populated_zone(zone) {
> +		for (order = MAX_ORDER - 1; order >= min_order; order--) {
> +			for (mt = 0; mt < MIGRATE_TYPES; mt++) {
> +				ret = walk_free_page_list(opaque, zone,
> +							  order, mt,
> +							  report_pfn_range);
> +				if (ret)
> +					return ret;
> +			}
> +		}
> +	}
> +
> +	return 0;
> +}
> +EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(walk_free_mem_block);

This looks like it could take a long time.  Will we end up needing to
add cond_resched() in there somewhere?

>  static void zoneref_set_zone(struct zone *zone, struct zoneref *zoneref)
>  {
>  	zoneref->zone = zone;
> -- 
> 2.7.4