Re: [PATCH v5 4/4] mm: Defer ZONE_DEVICE page initialization to the point where we init pgmap

From: Alexander Duyck
Date: Thu Oct 11 2018 - 11:39:08 EST


On 10/11/2018 1:39 AM, Yi Zhang wrote:
On 2018-10-10 at 11:18:49 -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 10:30 AM Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed 10-10-18 09:39:08, Alexander Duyck wrote:
On 10/10/2018 2:58 AM, Michal Hocko wrote:
On Tue 09-10-18 13:26:41, Alexander Duyck wrote:
[...]
I would think with that being the case we still probably need the call to
__SetPageReserved to set the bit with the expectation that it will not be
cleared for device-pages since the pages are not onlined. Removing the call
to __SetPageReserved would probably introduce a number of regressions as
there are multiple spots that use the reserved bit to determine if a page
can be swapped out to disk, mapped as system memory, or migrated.

PageReserved is meant to tell any potential pfn walkers that might get
to this struct page to back off and not touch it. Even though
ZONE_DEVICE doesn't online pages in traditional sense it makes those
pages available for further use so the page reserved bit should be
cleared.

So from what I can tell that isn't necessarily the case. Specifically if the
pagemap type is MEMORY_DEVICE_PRIVATE or MEMORY_DEVICE_PUBLIC both are
special cases where the memory may not be accessible to the CPU or cannot be
pinned in order to allow for eviction.

Could you give me an example please?

The specific case that Dan and Yi are referring to is for the type
MEMORY_DEVICE_FS_DAX. For that type I could probably look at not setting the
reserved bit. Part of me wants to say that we should wait and clear the bit
later, but that would end up just adding time back to initialization. At
this point I would consider the change more of a follow-up optimization
rather than a fix though since this is tailoring things specifically for DAX
versus the other ZONE_DEVICE types.

I thought I have already made it clear that these zone device hacks are
not acceptable to the generic hotplug code. If the current reserve bit
handling is not correct then give us a specific reason for that and we
can start thinking about the proper fix.


Right, so we're in a situation where a hack is needed for KVM's
current interpretation of the Reserved flag relative to dax mapped
pages. I'm arguing to push that knowledge / handling as deep as
possible into the core rather than hack the leaf implementations like
KVM, i.e. disable the Reserved flag for all non-MEMORY_DEVICE_*
ZONE_DEVICE types.

Here is the KVM thread about why they need a change:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/7/552

...and where I pushed back on a KVM-local hack:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/19/154
Yeah, Thank Dan, I think I can going on with something like this:

@@ -5589,6 +5589,7 @@ void __ref memmap_init_zone_device(struct zone *zone,
struct page *page = pfn_to_page(pfn);
__init_single_page(page, pfn, zone_idx, nid);
+ /* Could we move this a little bit earlier as I can
+ * direct use is_dax_page(page), or something else?
+ */
+ page->pgmap = pgmap;
/*
* Mark page reserved as it will need to wait for onlining
@@ -5597,14 +5598,14 @@ void __ref memmap_init_zone_device(struct zone *zone,
* We can use the non-atomic __set_bit operation for setting
* the flag as we are still initializing the pages.
*/
- __SetPageReserved(page);
+ if(!is_dax_page(page))
+ __SetPageReserved(page);
/*
* ZONE_DEVICE pages union ->lru with a ->pgmap back
* pointer and hmm_data. It is a bug if a ZONE_DEVICE
* page is ever freed or placed on a driver-private list.
*/
- page->pgmap = pgmap;
page->hmm_data = 0;


After Alex's patch merged.

So I am not a huge fan of splitting up the pgmap init from the hmm_data, but I suppose this is just for your proof-of-concept?

I already have another patch set outstanding that may actually make this change easier[1]. What I could do is add the logic there based on the pgmap.type as an additional patch since I pass a boolean to determine if I am setting the reserved bit or not.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20181005151006.17473.83040.stgit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/