Re: [PATCH v2 2/5] mm: zswap: calculate limits only when updated

[Yosry Ahmed]

On Mon, Apr 15, 2024 at 8:10 AM David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 13.04.24 03:05, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 12, 2024 at 12:48 PM David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 10.04.24 02:52, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> >>> [..]
> >>>>> Do we need a separate notifier chain for totalram_pages() updates?
> >>>>
> >>>> Good question. I actually might have the requirement to notify some arch
> >>>> code (s390x) from virtio-mem when fake adding/removing memory, and
> >>>> already wondered how to best wire that up.
> >>>>
> >>>> Maybe we can squeeze that into the existing notifier chain, but needs a
> >>>> bit of thought.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Sorry for the late reply, I had to think about this a bit.
> >>
> >>> Do you mean by adding new actions (e.g. MEM_FAKE_ONLINE,
> >>> MEM_FAKE_OFFLINE), or by reusing the existing actions (MEM_ONLINE,
> >>> MEM_OFFLINE, etc).
> >>
> >> At least for virtio-mem, I think we could have a MEM_ONLINE/MEM_OFFLINE
> >> that prepare the whole range belonging to the Linux memory block
> >> (/sys/devices/system/memory/memory...) to go online, and then have
> >> something like MEM_SOFT_ONLINE/MEM_SOFT_OFFLINE or
> >> ENABLE_PAGES/DISABLE_PAGES ... notifications when parts become usable
> >> (!PageOffline, handed to the buddy) or unusable (PageOffline, removed
> >> from the buddy).
> >>
> >> There are some details to be figured out, but it could work.
> >>
> >> And as virtio-mem currently operates in pageblock granularity (e.g., 2
> >> MiB), but frequently handles multiple contiguous pageblocks within a
> >> Linux memory block, it's not that bad.
> >>
> >>
> >> But the issue I see with ballooning is that we operate here often on
> >> page granularity. While we could optimize some cases, we might get quite
> >> some overhead from all the notifications. Alternatively, we could send a
> >> list of pages, but it won't win a beauty contest.
> >>
> >> I think the main issue is that, for my purpose (virtio-mem on s390x), I
> >> need to notify about the exact memory ranges (so I can reinitialize
> >> stuff in s390x code when memory gets effectively re-enabled). For other
> >> cases (total pages changing), we don't need the memory ranges, but only
> >> the "summary" -- or a notification afterwards that the total pages were
> >> just changed quite a bit.
> >
> >
> > Thanks for shedding some light on this. Although I am not familiar
> > with ballooning, sending notifications on page granularity updates
> > sounds terrible. It seems like this is not as straightforward as I had
> > anticipated.
> >
> > I was going to take a stab at this, but given that the motivation is a
> > minor optimization on the zswap side, I will probably just give up :)
>
> Oh no, so I have to do the work! ;)
>
> >
> > For now, I will drop this optimization from the series for now, and I
> > can revisit it if/when notifications for totalram_pages() are
> > implemented at some point. Please CC me if you do so for the s390x use
> > case :)
>
> I primarily care about virtio-mem resizing VM memory and adjusting
> totalram_pages(), memory ballooning for that is rather a hack for that
> use case ... so we're in agreement :)
>
> Likely we'd want two notification mechanisms, but no matter how I look
> at it, it's all a bit ugly.

I am assuming you mean one with exact memory ranges for your s390x use
case, and one high-level mechanism for totalram_pages() updates -- or
did I miss the point?

I am interested to see how page granularity updates would be handled
in this case. Perhaps they are only relevant for the high-level
mechanism? In that case, I suppose we can batch updates and notify
once when a threshold is crossed or something.

>
> I'll look into the virtio-mem case soonish and will let you know once I
> have something running.

Thanks!