From: Nitesh Narayan Lal <nitesh@redhat.com>
To: Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@gmail.com>
Cc: kvm list <kvm@vger.kernel.org>,
LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
linux-mm <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
virtio-dev@lists.oasis-open.org,
Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
lcapitulino@redhat.com, Pankaj Gupta <pagupta@redhat.com>,
"Wang, Wei W" <wei.w.wang@intel.com>,
Yang Zhang <yang.zhang.wz@gmail.com>,
Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>,
David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>,
"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>,
dodgen@google.com, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>,
dhildenb@redhat.com, Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>,
john.starks@microsoft.com, Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>,
Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>,
cohuck@redhat.com
Subject: Re: [RFC][Patch v12 1/2] mm: page_reporting: core infrastructure
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2019 09:15:37 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <09c6fbef-fa53-3a25-d3d6-460b9b6b2020@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAKgT0UfavuUT4ZvfxVdm3h25qc86ksxPO=GFpFkf8zbGAjHPvg@mail.gmail.com>
On 8/14/19 12:11 PM, Alexander Duyck wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 8:49 AM Nitesh Narayan Lal <nitesh@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 8/12/19 2:47 PM, Alexander Duyck wrote:
>>> On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 6:13 AM Nitesh Narayan Lal <nitesh@redhat.com> wrote:
>>>> This patch introduces the core infrastructure for free page reporting in
>>>> virtual environments. It enables the kernel to track the free pages which
>>>> can be reported to its hypervisor so that the hypervisor could
>>>> free and reuse that memory as per its requirement.
>>>>
>>>> While the pages are getting processed in the hypervisor (e.g.,
>>>> via MADV_DONTNEED), the guest must not use them, otherwise, data loss
>>>> would be possible. To avoid such a situation, these pages are
>>>> temporarily removed from the buddy. The amount of pages removed
>>>> temporarily from the buddy is governed by the backend(virtio-balloon
>>>> in our case).
>>>>
>>>> To efficiently identify free pages that can to be reported to the
>>>> hypervisor, bitmaps in a coarse granularity are used. Only fairly big
>>>> chunks are reported to the hypervisor - especially, to not break up THP
>>>> in the hypervisor - "MAX_ORDER - 2" on x86, and to save space. The bits
>>>> in the bitmap are an indication whether a page *might* be free, not a
>>>> guarantee. A new hook after buddy merging sets the bits.
>>>>
>>>> Bitmaps are stored per zone, protected by the zone lock. A workqueue
>>>> asynchronously processes the bitmaps, trying to isolate and report pages
>>>> that are still free. The backend (virtio-balloon) is responsible for
>>>> reporting these batched pages to the host synchronously. Once reporting/
>>>> freeing is complete, isolated pages are returned back to the buddy.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Nitesh Narayan Lal <nitesh@redhat.com>
>> [...]
>>>> +}
>>>> +
>>>> +/**
>>>> + * __page_reporting_enqueue - tracks the freed page in the respective zone's
>>>> + * bitmap and enqueues a new page reporting job to the workqueue if possible.
>>>> + */
>>>> +void __page_reporting_enqueue(struct page *page)
>>>> +{
>>>> + struct page_reporting_config *phconf;
>>>> + struct zone *zone;
>>>> +
>>>> + rcu_read_lock();
>>>> + /*
>>>> + * We should not process this page if either page reporting is not
>>>> + * yet completely enabled or it has been disabled by the backend.
>>>> + */
>>>> + phconf = rcu_dereference(page_reporting_conf);
>>>> + if (!phconf)
>>>> + return;
>>>> +
>>>> + zone = page_zone(page);
>>>> + bitmap_set_bit(page, zone);
>>>> +
>>>> + /*
>>>> + * We should not enqueue a job if a previously enqueued reporting work
>>>> + * is in progress or we don't have enough free pages in the zone.
>>>> + */
>>>> + if (atomic_read(&zone->free_pages) >= phconf->max_pages &&
>>>> + !atomic_cmpxchg(&phconf->refcnt, 0, 1))
>>> This doesn't make any sense to me. Why are you only incrementing the
>>> refcount if it is zero? Combining this with the assignment above, this
>>> isn't really a refcnt. It is just an oversized bitflag.
>>
>> The intent for having an extra variable was to ensure that at a time only one
>> reporting job is enqueued. I do agree that for that purpose I really don't need
>> a reference counter and I should have used something like bool
>> 'page_hinting_active'. But with bool, I think there could be a possible chance
>> of race. Maybe I should rename this variable and keep it as atomic.
>> Any thoughts?
> You could just use a bitflag to achieve what you are doing here. That
> is the primary use case for many of the test_and_set_bit type
> operations. However one issue with doing it as a bitflag is that you
> have no way of telling that you took care of all requesters.
I think you are right, I might end up missing on certain reporting
opportunities in some special cases. Specifically when the pages which are
part of this new reporting request belongs to a section of the bitmap which
has already been scanned. Although, I have failed to reproduce this kind of
situation in an actual setup.
> That is
> where having an actual reference count comes in handy as you know
> exactly how many zones are requesting to be reported on.
True.
>
>>> Also I am pretty sure this results in the opportunity to miss pages
>>> because there is nothing to prevent you from possibly missing a ton of
>>> pages you could hint on if a large number of pages are pushed out all
>>> at once and then the system goes idle in terms of memory allocation
>>> and freeing.
>>
>> I was looking at how you are enqueuing/processing reporting jobs for each zone.
>> I am wondering if I should also consider something on similar lines as having
>> that I might be able to address the concern which you have raised above. But it
>> would also mean that I have to add an additional flag in the zone_flags. :)
> You could do it either in the zone or outside the zone as yet another
> bitmap. I decided to put the flags inside the zone because there was a
> number of free bits there and it should be faster since we were
> already using the zone structure.
There are two possibilities which could happen while I am reporting:
1. Another request might come in for a different zone.
2. Another request could come in for the same zone and the pages belong to a
section of the bitmap which has already been scanned.
Having a per zone flag to indicate reporting status will solve the first
issue and to an extent the second as well. Having refcnt will possibly solve
both of them. What I am wondering about is that in my case I could easily
impact the performance negatively by performing more bitmap scanning.
--
Thanks
Nitesh
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-08-15 13:15 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 35+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-08-12 13:12 [RFC][PATCH v12 0/2] mm: Support for page reporting Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-12 13:12 ` [RFC][Patch v12 1/2] mm: page_reporting: core infrastructure Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-12 18:47 ` Alexander Duyck
2019-08-12 20:04 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-20 14:11 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-12 20:05 ` David Hildenbrand
2019-08-13 10:30 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-13 10:34 ` David Hildenbrand
2019-08-13 10:42 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-13 10:44 ` David Hildenbrand
2019-08-13 23:14 ` Alexander Duyck
2019-08-14 7:07 ` David Hildenbrand
2019-08-14 12:49 ` [virtio-dev] " Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-14 15:49 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-14 16:11 ` Alexander Duyck
2019-08-15 13:15 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal [this message]
2019-08-15 19:22 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-15 23:00 ` Alexander Duyck
2019-08-16 18:35 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-30 15:15 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-30 15:31 ` Alexander Duyck
2019-08-30 16:05 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-09-04 8:40 ` [virtio-dev] " David Hildenbrand
2019-10-10 20:36 ` Alexander Duyck
2019-10-11 11:02 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-12 13:12 ` [RFC][Patch v12 2/2] virtio-balloon: interface to support free page reporting Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-14 10:29 ` Cornelia Huck
2019-08-14 11:47 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-14 13:42 ` Cornelia Huck
2019-08-14 14:01 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-12 13:13 ` [QEMU Patch 1/2] virtio-balloon: adding bit for page reporting support Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-12 13:13 ` [QEMU Patch 2/2] virtio-balloon: support for handling page reporting Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-08-12 15:18 ` Alexander Duyck
2019-08-12 15:26 ` Nitesh Narayan Lal
2019-09-11 12:30 ` [RFC][PATCH v12 0/2] mm: Support for " David Hildenbrand
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