Re: [PATCH] mm/damon/stat: set last_refresh_jiffies to jiffies at startup

From: Quanmin Yan

Date: Tue Oct 28 2025 - 22:03:03 EST



在 2025/10/29 9:30, SeongJae Park 写道:
On Tue, 28 Oct 2025 07:32:49 -0700 SeongJae Park <sj@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 28 Oct 2025 07:19:14 -0700 SeongJae Park <sj@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:19:27 +0800 Quanmin Yan <yanquanmin1@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In DAMON_STAT's damon_stat_damon_call_fn(), time_before_eq() is used to
avoid unnecessarily frequent stat update.

On 32-bit systems, the kernel initializes jiffies to "-5 minutes" to make
jiffies wrap bugs appear earlier. However, this causes time_before_eq()
in DAMON_STAT to unexpectedly return true during the first 5 minutes
after boot on 32-bit systems (see [1] for more explanation, which fixes
another jiffies-related issue in DAMON). As a result, DAMON_STAT does not
update any monitoring results during that period, which can be more
confusing when DAMON_STAT_ENABLED_DEFAULT is enabled.

Fix it by setting last_refresh_jiffies to jiffies at startup.
Nice catch, thank you for this patch!

[1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250822025057.1740854-1-ekffu200098@xxxxxxxxx

Fixes: fabdd1e911da ("mm/damon/stat: calculate and expose estimated memory bandwidth")
Signed-off-by: Quanmin Yan <yanquanmin1@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
mm/damon/stat.c | 3 +++
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

diff --git a/mm/damon/stat.c b/mm/damon/stat.c
index 6c4503d2aee3..6dc3e18de910 100644
--- a/mm/damon/stat.c
+++ b/mm/damon/stat.c
@@ -132,6 +132,9 @@ static int damon_stat_damon_call_fn(void *data)
struct damon_ctx *c = data;
static unsigned long last_refresh_jiffies;
+ if (unlikely(!last_refresh_jiffies))
+ last_refresh_jiffies = jiffies;
+
How about doing the initialization together with the declaration? E.g.,

static int damon_stat_damon_call_fn(void *data)
{
struct damon_ctx *c = data;
- static unsigned long last_refresh_jiffies;
+ static unsigned long last_refresh_jiffies = jiffies;
Please ignore the above suggestion. It will even not build, like below...

.../mm/damon/stat.c: In function ‘damon_stat_damon_call_fn’:
.../mm/damon/stat.c:133:53: error: initializer element is not constant
133 | static unsigned long last_refresh_jiffies = jiffies;
| ^~~~~~~

Actually, a similar issue can happen again if DAMON_STAT is stopped and
restarted by user. That is, if user stops DAMON_STAT just after
last_refresh_jiffies is updated, and restart it after 5 seconds or more, the
time_before_eq() on damon_call_fn() will return true, so stat updates will
happen earlier than expected. Shouldn't be a real problem, but better to avoid
if possible.

How about making last_refresh_jiffies a global variable and initialize it on
damon_stat_start()? To avoid unnecessary name conflicts, the variable name
would also better to be changed, e.g., damon_stat_last_refresh_jiffies.
But, please consider the above one.

And I just realized a similar issue exist for next_update_jiffies in
mm/damon/sysfs.c file. Please feel free to send a patch for that if you
willing to.

OK, I’ll review all these issues and send a new patch set once everything
is ready.🙂

Thanks,
Quanmin Yan

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