Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/4] mm, page_owner: add folio allocate post callback for struct page_owner to make the owner clearer

From: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
To: jeff.xie@linux.dev
Cc: Jeff Xie <xiehuan09@gmail.com>,
	akpm@linux-foundation.org, iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com,
	vbabka@suse.cz, cl@linux.com, penberg@kernel.org,
	rientjes@google.com, roman.gushchin@linux.dev,
	42.hyeyoo@gmail.com, linux-mm@kvack.org,
	linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	chensong_2000@189.cn
Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/4] mm, page_owner: add folio allocate post callback for struct page_owner to make the owner clearer
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2023 16:38:41 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <ZU0LEYfu01W6sQLR@casper.infradead.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <58d4f340549dd69a5d605c1526ceceb035b3cc98@linux.dev>

On Thu, Nov 09, 2023 at 04:04:39PM +0000, jeff.xie@linux.dev wrote:
> November 9, 2023 at 11:36 PM, "Matthew Wilcox" <willy@infradead.org> wrote:
> > But we want that anyway (or at least I do). You're right that vmalloc
> > pages are not marked as being vmalloc pages and don't contain the
> > information about which vmalloc area they belong to. I've talked about
> > ways we can add that information to folios in the past, but I have a lot
> > of other projects I'm working on. Are you interested in doing that?
> >
> 
> Certainly, I'm willing to give it a try. If a folio can include vmalloc information
> or more information, this is great. I may need to understand the background of why
> you proposed this method in the past.

I can't find the proposal now, but it's basically this:

Turn PG_slab into a PG_kernel.  If PG_kernel is set, then other flags
change their meaning.  Flags that should be reusable: writeback,
referenced, uptodate, lru, active, workingset, private, reclaim

One of those flags gets reused to be the new slab.  So, eg
folio_test_slab() becomes:

	return (folio->flags & (PG_kernel | PG_slab)) == (PG_kernel | PG_slab);

Now we have somewhere that we can use for PG_vmalloc (also PG_reserved
can become a PG_kernel sub-flag, freeing up a page flag).

We'd need to change some helpers.  eg folio_mapping() currently does:

        if (unlikely(folio_test_slab(folio)))
                return NULL;

and that should be:

	if (unlikely(folio_test_kernel(folio)))
		return NULL;

With that in place, we can reuse the folio->mapping space to point to
the struct vm_struct that allocated it.

This isn't an easy project and will require a lot of testing.  It has
some upsides, like freeing up a page flag.