Re: [Lsf-pc] [LSF/MM/BPF TOPIC][RFC PATCH v4 00/27] Private Memory Nodes (w/ Compressed RAM)

[Gregory Price]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2026 at 10:21:30AM +0200, Vlastimil Babka (SUSE) wrote:
> On 6/15/26 17:37, Gregory Price wrote:
> > 
> > One thought would be a way to switch what fallback list is used, and
> > then have specific fallback lists for certain contexts.
> > 
> > Right now there is a single example of this: __GFP_THISNODE
> >   |= __GFP_THISNODE   =>  NOFALLBACK
> >   &= ~__GFP_THISNODE  =>  FALLBACK
> > 
> > We could add an interface with the desired fallback list based as an
> > argument, and let get_page_from_freelist to prefer that over the default
> > global lists.
> 
> Does it mean a new argument in a number of functions in the page allocator,
> or can it be mapped to alloc_flags (at least internally?), because the
> number of possible fallback lists is small enough?
>

What I ended up with was adding a single page_alloc.c external interface
that allows you define the zonelist via an enum, and then an internal
selector resolution in prepare_alloc_pages() stored in alloc_context

eg:

static inline bool prepare_alloc_pages(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order,
                int preferred_nid, nodemask_t *nodemask,
                struct alloc_context *ac, gfp_t *alloc_gfp,
                unsigned int *alloc_flags)
{       
        ac->highest_zoneidx = gfp_zone(gfp_mask);
        ac->zonelist = select_zonelist(preferred_nid, gfp_mask, ac->zlsel);
	... snip ...
}

struct folio *__folio_alloc_zonelist_noprof(gfp_t gfp, unsigned int order,
                int preferred_nid, nodemask_t *nodemask,
                enum alloc_zonelist zlsel);


The original __folio_alloc* functions just add a DEFAULT - which tells
select_zonelist() to base the decision on __GFP_THISNODE.


struct folio *__folio_alloc_noprof(gfp_t gfp, unsigned int order, int preferred_nid,
                nodemask_t *nodemask)
{
        return __folio_alloc_core(gfp, order, preferred_nid, nodemask,
                                  ALLOC_ZONELIST_DEFAULT);
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL(__folio_alloc_noprof);


This does a few things
  - The isolation is structural, there is no way to accidentally
    allocate private memory without passing ALLOC_ZONELIST_PRIVATE

  - The isolation forces folios - there are no non-folio interfaces
    which allow zonelist selection

  - The zonelist selection is confined to this allocation context,
    so no inheritence is possible.



I tried to avoid using an ALLOC_ flag so we can avoid yet another flag
crunch, but there certainly are few enough zonelists that we could
encode it there and expose it.  I know Brendan was looking at plumbing
alloc flags out to an interface, so i'm open to that.

Externally the way I determine what zonelist to use is a lookup based on
reason - letting the node filter.  This is really only needed in a
couple spots:

mm/khugepaged.c:  enum alloc_zonelist zlsel = alloc_zonelist_for_node(node, NODE_ALLOC_RECLAIM);
mm/vmscan.c:      mtc->zlsel = alloc_zonelist_for_nodemask(mtc->nmask, NODE_ALLOC_TIERING);
mm/migrate.c:     .zlsel = alloc_zonelist_for_node(node, NODE_ALLOC_USER_MIGRATE),

static inline enum alloc_zonelist
alloc_zonelist_for_node(int nid, enum node_alloc_reason reason)
{
        bool ok;

        if (!node_state(nid, N_MEMORY_PRIVATE))
                return ALLOC_ZONELIST_DEFAULT;
        switch (reason) {
        case NODE_ALLOC_RECLAIM:
                ok = node_is_reclaimable(nid);
                break;
        case NODE_ALLOC_TIERING:
                ok = node_allows_tiering(nid);
                break;
        case NODE_ALLOC_USER_MIGRATE:
                ok = node_allows_user_migrate(nid);
                break;
        default:
                ok = false;
        }
        return ok ? ALLOC_ZONELIST_PRIVATE : ALLOC_ZONELIST_DEFAULT;
}

Otherwise... everything is now a mempolicy w/ MPOL_F_BIND and all the
handling goes through the normal fault-paths :]

static struct page *__alloc_pages_mpol(gfp_t gfp, unsigned int order,
                struct mempolicy *pol, pgoff_t ilx, int nid)
{
        nodemask_t *nodemask;
        struct page *page;
        enum alloc_zonelist zlsel = (pol->flags & MPOL_F_PRIVATE) ?
                ALLOC_ZONELIST_PRIVATE : ALLOC_ZONELIST_DEFAULT;
...
        if (pol->mode == MPOL_PREFERRED_MANY)
                return alloc_pages_preferred_many(gfp, order, nid, nodemask,
                                                  zlsel);
...
}


Switching to an alloc_flag would probably be trivially if that's really
wanted

~Gregory