Re: [RFC PATCH v2] mm: initialize struct pages reserved by ZONE_DEVICE driver.

[David Hildenbrand]

On 17.09.19 19:04, Waiman Long wrote:
> On 9/17/19 12:21 PM, Qian Cai wrote:
>> On Tue, 2019-09-17 at 11:49 -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
>>> On 9/17/19 3:13 AM, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>> On 17.09.19 04:34, Toshiki Fukasawa wrote:
>>>>> On 2019/09/09 16:46, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>>>> Let's take a step back here to understand the issues I am aware of. I
>>>>>> think we should solve this for good now:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A PFN walker takes a look at a random PFN at a random point in time. It
>>>>>> finds a PFN with SECTION_MARKED_PRESENT && !SECTION_IS_ONLINE. The
>>>>>> options are:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1. It is buddy memory (add_memory()) that has not been online yet. The
>>>>>> memmap contains garbage. Don't access.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2. It is ZONE_DEVICE memory with a valid memmap. Access it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 3. It is ZONE_DEVICE memory with an invalid memmap, because the section
>>>>>> is only partially present: E.g., device starts at offset 64MB within a
>>>>>> section or the device ends at offset 64MB within a section. Don't access it.
>>>>> I don't agree with case #3. In the case, struct page area is not allocated on
>>>>> ZONE_DEVICE, but is allocated on system memory. So I think we can access the
>>>>> struct pages. What do you mean "invalid memmap"?
>>>> No, that's not the case. There is no memory, especially not system
>>>> memory. We only allow partially present sections (sub-section memory
>>>> hotplug) for ZONE_DEVICE.
>>>>
>>>> invalid memmap == memmap was not initialized == struct pages contains
>>>> garbage. There is a memmap, but accessing it (e.g., pfn_to_nid()) will
>>>> trigger a BUG.
>>>>
>>> As long as the page structures exist, they should be initialized to some
>>> known state. We could set PagePoison for those invalid memmap. It is the
>> Sounds like you want to run page_init_poison() by default.
> 
> Yes for those pages that are not initialized otherwise. I don't want to
> run page_init_poison() for the whole ZONE_DEVICE memory range as it can
> take a while if we are talking about TBs of persistent memory. Also most
> of the pages will be reinitialized anyway in the init process. So it is
> mostly a wasted effort. However, for those reserved pages that are not
> being exported to the memory management layer, having them initialized
> to a known state will cause less problem down the road.
> 

No hacks please. There has to be a proper way to identify if a memmap
was initialized or not. Fake-initializing a memmap is *not* the answer.

-- 

Thanks,

David / dhildenb