Re: [PATCH V3] KSM: allow dedup all tasks memory

[Timofey Titovets]

ÐÑ, 13 ÐÐÑÐ. 2018 Ð. Ð 21:43, Pavel Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@xxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> > > Is it really necessary to have an extra thread in ksm just to add vma's
> > > for scanning? Can we do it right from the scanner thread? Also, may be
> > > it is better to add vma's at their creation time when KSM_MODE_ALWAYS is
> > > enabled?
> > >
> > > Thank you,
> > > Pasha
> >
> > Oh, thats a long story, and my english to bad for describe all things,
> > even that hard to find linux-mm conversation several years ago about that.
> >
> > Anyway, so:
> > In V2 - i use scanner thread to add VMA, but i think scanner do that
> > with too high rate.
> > i.e. walk on task list, and get new task every 20ms, to wait write semaphore,
> > to get VMA...
> > To high rate for task list scanner, i think it's overkill.
> >
> > About add VMA from creation time,
> > UKSM add ksm_enter() hooks to mm subsystem, i port that to KSM.
> > But some mm people say what they not like add KSM hooks to other subsystems.
> > And want ksm do that internally by some way.
> >
> > Frankly speaking i didn't have enough knowledge and skills to do that
> > another way in past time.
> > They also suggest me look to THP for that logic, but i can't find how
> > THP do that without hooks, and
> > where THP truly scan memory.
> >
> > So, after all of that i implemented this in that way.
> > In first iteration as part of ksm scan thread, and in second, by
> > separate thread.
> > Because that allow to add VMA in fully independent way.
>
> It still feels as a wrong direction. A new thread that adds random
> VMA's to scan, and no way to optimize the queue fairness for example.
> It should really be done at creation time, when VMA is created it
> should be added to KSM scanning queue, or KSM main scanner thread
> should go through VMA list in a coherent order.

How you see queue fairness in that case?
i.e. if you talk about moving from old VMA to new VMA,
IIRC i can't find any whole kernel list of VMAs.

i.e. i really understood what you don't like exactly,
but for that we need add hooks as i already mentioned above.
(And i already try get that to kernel [1]).

So, as i wrote you below, i need some maintainer opinion
in which way that responsible person of mm see 'right' implementation.

> The design of having a separate thread is bad. I plan in the future to
> add thread per node support to KSM, and this one odd thread won't
> break things, to which queue should this thread add VMA if there are
> multiple queues?

That will be interesting to look :)
But IMHO:
I think you will need to add some code to ksm_enter().
Because madvise() internally call ksm_enter().

So ksm_enter() will decide which tread must process that.
That not depends on caller.

Thanks.

> Thank you,
> Pasha
>
- - -
1. https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/11/8/206