Re: [PATCH] mm: hwpoison: deal with page cache THP

[Yang Shi]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 11:17 PM HORIGUCHI NAOYA(堀口　直也)
<naoya.horiguchi@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 03:13:22PM -0700, Yang Shi wrote:
> > Currently hwpoison doesn't handle page cache THP, just give up and return
> > error.  It is just because the hwpoison THP support was added before
> > page cache THP was supported.
> >
> > Handling page cache THP is simple, they could be offlined by splitting THP,
> > just like anonymous THP.
>
> I think that this patch is not enough to contain an error because page table
> entries pointing to subpages in shmem thp are removed during thp splitting.
> Then the processes using the file newly allocates another (zeroed) page for
> the poisoned address, which results in slient data lost.
>
> According to the comment in unmap_page() at mm/huge_memory.c, file pages are
> supposed to be faulted back on demand:
>
>   static void unmap_page(struct page *page)
>   ...
>           /*
>            * Anon pages need migration entries to preserve them, but file
>            * pages can simply be left unmapped, then faulted back on demand.
>            * If that is ever changed (perhaps for mlock), update remap_page().
>            */
>           if (PageAnon(page))
>                   try_to_migrate(page, ttu_flags);
>           else
>                   try_to_unmap(page, ttu_flags | TTU_IGNORE_MLOCK);
>
> , but I don't think that faulting back during memory error handling might be
> hard because it does not have any direct information about mapping processes
> of an error page.  memory_failure() uses try_to_unmap() to find them but
> splitting of shmem thp makes this impossible, because it removes the related
> page table entries.
>
> There was a discussion about another approach of keeping error pages in page
> cache for filesystem without backend storage.
> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/alpine.LSU.2.11.2103111312310.7859@eggly.anvils/
> This approach seems to me less complicated, but one concern is that this
> change affects user-visible behavior of memory errors.  Keeping error pages
> in page cache means that the errors are persistent until next system reboot,
> so we might need to define the way to clear the errors to continue to use
> the error file.  Current implementation is just to send SIGBUS to the
> mapping processes (at least once), then forget about the error, so there is
> no such issue.
>
> Another thought of possible solution might be to send SIGBUS immediately when
> a memory error happens on a shmem thp. We can find all the mapping processes
> before splitting shmem thp, so send SIGBUS first, then split it and contain
> the error page.  This is not elegant (giving up any optional actions) but
> anyway we can avoid the silent data lost.

Thanks a lot. I apologize I didn't notice you already posted a similar
patch before.

Yes, I think I focused on the soft offline part too much and missed
the uncorrected error part and I admit I did underestimate the
problem.

I think Hugh's suggestion makes sense if we treat tmpfs as a regular
filesystem (just memory backed). AFAIK, some filesystem, e.g. btrfs,
may do checksum after reading from storage block then return an error
if checksum is not right since it may indicate hardware failure on
disk. Then the syscalls or page fault return error or SIGBUS.

So in shmem/tmpfs case, if hwpoisoned page is met, just return error
(-EIO or whatever) for syscall or SIGBUS for page fault. It does align
with the behavior of other filesystems. It is definitely applications'
responsibility to check the return value of read/write syscalls.

>
> - Naoya Horiguchi
>
> >
> > The question is how to distinguish them with allocating and freeing THP
> > which can't be handled by hwpoison properly.  It seems page->mapping is a
> > good indicator, both anonymous page and file page have it populated, but
> > it won't be populated until the page is added to rmap or page cache, in
> > other word, instantiated.  If page->mapping is populated it is
> > definitely not in allocating or freeing.
> >
> > The later get_page_unless_zero() could serialize against page free
> > paths.
> >
> > Cc: Naoya Horiguchi <naoya.horiguchi@xxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Oscar Salvador <osalvador@xxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Signed-off-by: Yang Shi <shy828301@xxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> >  mm/memory-failure.c | 21 ++++++++++++---------
> >  1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/mm/memory-failure.c b/mm/memory-failure.c
> > index 60df8fcd0444..caa0b0c1f5b8 100644
> > --- a/mm/memory-failure.c
> > +++ b/mm/memory-failure.c
> > @@ -1149,13 +1149,16 @@ static int __get_hwpoison_page(struct page *page)
> >
> >       if (PageTransHuge(head)) {
> >               /*
> > -              * Non anonymous thp exists only in allocation/free time. We
> > -              * can't handle such a case correctly, so let's give it up.
> > -              * This should be better than triggering BUG_ON when kernel
> > -              * tries to touch the "partially handled" page.
> > +              * We can't handle allocating or freeing THPs, so let's give
> > +              * it up. This should be better than triggering BUG_ON when
> > +              * kernel tries to touch the "partially handled" page.
> > +              *
> > +              * page->mapping won't be initialized until the page is added
> > +              * to rmap or page cache.  Use this as an indicator for if
> > +              * this is an instantiated page.
> >                */
> > -             if (!PageAnon(head)) {
> > -                     pr_err("Memory failure: %#lx: non anonymous thp\n",
> > +             if (!head->mapping) {
> > +                     pr_err("Memory failure: %#lx: non instantiated thp\n",
> >                               page_to_pfn(page));
> >                       return 0;
> >               }
> > @@ -1414,12 +1417,12 @@ static int identify_page_state(unsigned long pfn, struct page *p,
> >  static int try_to_split_thp_page(struct page *page, const char *msg)
> >  {
> >       lock_page(page);
> > -     if (!PageAnon(page) || unlikely(split_huge_page(page))) {
> > +     if (!page->mapping || unlikely(split_huge_page(page))) {
> >               unsigned long pfn = page_to_pfn(page);
> >
> >               unlock_page(page);
> > -             if (!PageAnon(page))
> > -                     pr_info("%s: %#lx: non anonymous thp\n", msg, pfn);
> > +             if (!page->mapping)
> > +                     pr_info("%s: %#lx: not instantiated thp\n", msg, pfn);
> >               else
> >                       pr_info("%s: %#lx: thp split failed\n", msg, pfn);
> >               put_page(page);
> > --
> > 2.26.2
> >