Re: uninitialized pmem struct pages

[Michal Hocko]

On Tue 05-01-21 00:27:34, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 12:17 AM Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue 05-01-21 09:01:00, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > On Mon 04-01-21 16:44:52, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> > > > On 04.01.21 16:43, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> > > > > On 04.01.21 16:33, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > > >> On Mon 04-01-21 16:15:23, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> > > > >>> On 04.01.21 16:10, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > > >> [...]
> > > > >>> Do the physical addresses you see fall into the same section as boot
> > > > >>> memory? Or what's around these addresses?
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Yes I am getting a garbage for the first struct page belonging to the
> > > > >> pmem section [1]
> > > > >> [    0.020161] ACPI: SRAT: Node 0 PXM 0 [mem 0x100000000-0x603fffffff]
> > > > >> [    0.020163] ACPI: SRAT: Node 4 PXM 4 [mem 0x6060000000-0x11d5fffffff] non-volatile
> > > > >>
> > > > >> The pfn without the initialized struct page is 0x6060000. This is a
> > > > >> first pfn in a section.
> > > > >
> > > > > Okay, so we're not dealing with the "early section" mess I described,
> > > > > different story.
> > > > >
> > > > > Due to [1], is_mem_section_removable() called
> > > > > pfn_to_page(PHYS_PFN(0x6060000)). page_zone(page) made it crash, as not
> > > > > initialized.
> > > > >
> > > > > Let's assume this is indeed a reserved pfn in the altmap. What's the
> > > > > actual address of the memmap?
> > > > >
> > > > > I do wonder what hosts pfn_to_page(PHYS_PFN(0x6060000)) - is it actually
> > > > > part of the actual altmap (i.e. > 0x6060000) or maybe even self-hosted?
> > > > >
> > > > > If it's not self-hosted, initializing the relevant memmaps should work
> > > > > just fine I guess. Otherwise things get more complicated.
> > > >
> > > > Oh, I forgot: pfn_to_online_page() should at least in your example make
> > > > sure other pfn walkers are safe. It was just an issue of
> > > > is_mem_section_removable().
> > >
> > > Hmm, I suspect you are right. I haven't put this together, thanks! The memory
> > > section is indeed marked offline so pfn_to_online_page would indeed bail
> > > out:
> > > crash> p (0x6060000>>15)
> > > $3 = 3084
> > > crash> p mem_section[3084/128][3084 & 127]
> > > $4 = {
> > >   section_mem_map = 18446736128020054019,
> > >   usage = 0xffff902dcf956680,
> > >   page_ext = 0x0,
> > >   pad = 0
> > > }
> > > crash> p 18446736128020054019 & (1UL<<2)
> > > $5 = 0
> > >
> > > That makes it considerably less of a problem than I thought!
> >
> > Forgot to add that those who are running kernels without 53cdc1cb29e8
> > ("drivers/base/memory.c: indicate all memory blocks as removable") for
> > some reason can fix the crash by the following simple patch.
> >
> > Index: linux-5.3-users_mhocko_SLE15-SP2_for-next/drivers/base/memory.c
> > ===================================================================
> > --- linux-5.3-users_mhocko_SLE15-SP2_for-next.orig/drivers/base/memory.c
> > +++ linux-5.3-users_mhocko_SLE15-SP2_for-next/drivers/base/memory.c
> > @@ -152,9 +152,14 @@ static ssize_t removable_show(struct dev
> >                 goto out;
> >
> >         for (i = 0; i < sections_per_block; i++) {
> > -               if (!present_section_nr(mem->start_section_nr + i))
> > +               unsigned long nr = mem->start_section_nr + i;
> > +               if (!present_section_nr(nr))
> >                         continue;
> > -               pfn = section_nr_to_pfn(mem->start_section_nr + i);
> > +               if (!online_section_nr()) {
> 
> I assume that's onlince_section_nr(nr) in the version that compiles?

Yup.

> This makes sense because the memory block size is larger than the
> section size. I suspect you have 1GB memory block size on this system,
> but since the System RAM and PMEM collide at a 512MB alignment in a
> memory block you end up walking the back end of the last 512MB of the
> System RAM memory block and run into the offline PMEM section.

Sections are 128MB and memory blocks are 2GB on this system.

> So, I don't think it's pfn_to_online_page that necessarily needs to
> know how to disambiguate each page, it's things that walk sections and
> memory blocks and expects them to be consistent over the span.

Well, memory hotplug code is hard wired to sparse memory model so in
this particular case asking about the section is ok. But pfn walkers
shouldn't really care and only rely on pfn_to_online_page. But that will
do the right thing here. So we are good as long as the section is marked
properly. But this would become a problem as soon as the uninitialized
pages where sharing the same memory section as David pointed out.
pfn_to_online_page would then return something containing garbage. So we
should still think of a way to either initialize all those pages or make
sure pfn_to_online_page recognizes them. The former is preferred IMHO.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs