Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] Add hugetlb MADV_DONTNEED support

From: Axel Rasmussen
Date: Thu Jan 27 2022 - 12:53:13 EST


On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 3:57 AM David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 13.01.22 19:03, Mike Kravetz wrote:
> > Userfaultfd selftests for hugetlb does not perform UFFD_EVENT_REMAP
> > testing. However, mremap support was recently added in commit
> > 550a7d60bd5e ("mm, hugepages: add mremap() support for hugepage backed
> > vma"). While attempting to enable mremap support in the test, it was
> > discovered that the mremap test indirectly depends on MADV_DONTNEED.
> >
> > hugetlb does not support MADV_DONTNEED. However, the only thing
> > preventing support is a check in can_madv_lru_vma(). Simply removing
> > the check will enable support.
> >
> > This is sent as a RFC because there is no existing use case calling
> > for hugetlb MADV_DONTNEED support except possibly the userfaultfd test.
> > However, adding support makes sense as it is fairly trivial and brings
> > hugetlb functionality more in line with 'normal' memory.
> >
>
> Just a note:
>
> QEMU doesn't use huge anonymous memory directly (MAP_ANON | MAP_HUGE...)
> but instead always goes either via hugetlbfs or via memfd.
>
> For MAP_PRIVATE hugetlb mappings, fallocate(FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE) seems
> to get the job done (IOW: also discards private anon pages). See the
> comments in the QEMU code below. I remember that that is somewhat
> inconsistent. For ordinary MAP_PRIVATE mapped files I remember that we
> always need fallocate(FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE) + madvise(QEMU_MADV_DONTNEED)
> to make sure
>
> a) All file pages are removed
> b) All private anon pages are removed
>
> IIRC hugetlbfs really is different in that regard, but maybe other fs
> behave similarly.
>
> That's why QEMU was able to live for now without MADV_DONTNEED support
> for hugetlbfs and most probably won't ever need it.

Agreed, all of the production use cases I'm aware of use hugetlbfs,
not MAP_HUGE...

But, I would say this is convenient for testing purposes. It's
slightly more convenient to not have to mount hugetlbfs / perform the
associated setup for tests.

Perhaps that's only a small motivation for enabling this, but then
again Mike's patch to do so is likewise very small. :)


>
>
> ...
> /* The logic here is messy;
> * madvise DONTNEED fails for hugepages
> * fallocate works on hugepages and shmem
> * shared anonymous memory requires madvise REMOVE
> */
> need_madvise = (rb->page_size == qemu_host_page_size);
> need_fallocate = rb->fd != -1;
> if (need_fallocate) {
> /* For a file, this causes the area of the file to be zero'd
> * if read, and for hugetlbfs also causes it to be unmapped
> * so a userfault will trigger.
> */
> #ifdef CONFIG_FALLOCATE_PUNCH_HOLE
> ret = fallocate(rb->fd, FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE | FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE,
> start, length);
> if (ret) {
> ret = -errno;
> error_report("ram_block_discard_range: Failed to fallocate "
> "%s:%" PRIx64 " +%zx (%d)",
> rb->idstr, start, length, ret);
> goto err;
> }
> #else
> ret = -ENOSYS;
> error_report("ram_block_discard_range: fallocate not available/file"
> "%s:%" PRIx64 " +%zx (%d)",
> rb->idstr, start, length, ret);
> goto err;
> #endif
> }
> if (need_madvise) {
> /* For normal RAM this causes it to be unmapped,
> * for shared memory it causes the local mapping to disappear
> * and to fall back on the file contents (which we just
> * fallocate'd away).
> */
> #if defined(CONFIG_MADVISE)
> if (qemu_ram_is_shared(rb) && rb->fd < 0) {
> ret = madvise(host_startaddr, length, QEMU_MADV_REMOVE);
> } else {
> ret = madvise(host_startaddr, length, QEMU_MADV_DONTNEED);
> }
> if (ret) {
> ret = -errno;
> error_report("ram_block_discard_range: Failed to discard range "
> "%s:%" PRIx64 " +%zx (%d)",
> rb->idstr, start, length, ret);
> goto err;
> }
> #else
> ...
>
> --
> Thanks,
>
> David / dhildenb
>