Re: [PATCH v5 3/5] mm: Make alloc_contig_range handle free hugetlb pages

[Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>]

On Wed 17-03-21 12:12:49, Oscar Salvador wrote:
> alloc_contig_range will fail if it ever sees a HugeTLB page within the
> range we are trying to allocate, even when that page is free and can be
> easily reallocated.
> This has proved to be problematic for some users of alloc_contic_range,
> e.g: CMA and virtio-mem, where those would fail the call even when those
> pages lay in ZONE_MOVABLE and are free.
> 
> We can do better by trying to replace such page.
> 
> Free hugepages are tricky to handle so as to no userspace application
> notices disruption, we need to replace the current free hugepage with
> a new one.
> 
> In order to do that, a new function called alloc_and_dissolve_huge_page
> is introduced.
> This function will first try to get a new fresh hugepage, and if it
> succeeds, it will replace the old one in the free hugepage pool.
> 
> All operations are being handled under hugetlb_lock, so no races are

Slightly confusing because allocation which is a part of the process is
certainly not done under the lock.
"The free page replacement is done under hugetlb_lock, so no external
user of hugetlb will notice the change. There is one tricky case when
page's refcount is 0 because it is in the process of being released.
A mising PageHugeFreed bit will tell us that freeing is in flight so we
retry after dropping the hugetlb_lock. The race window should be small
and the next retry should make a forward progress.

> possible. The only exception is when page's refcount is 0, but it still
> has not been flagged as PageHugeFreed.
> E.g, below scenario:
> 
> CPU0				CPU1
> __free_huge_page()		isolate_or_dissolve_huge_page
> 				  PageHuge() == T
> 				  alloc_and_dissolve_huge_page
> 				    alloc_fresh_huge_page()
> 				    spin_lock(hugetlb_lock)
> 				    // PageHuge() && !PageHugeFreed &&
> 				    // !PageCount()
> 				    spin_unlock(hugetlb_lock)
>   spin_lock(hugetlb_lock)
>   1) update_and_free_page
>        PageHuge() == F
>        __free_pages()
>   2) enqueue_huge_page
>        SetPageHugeFreed()
>   spin_unlock(&hugetlb_lock)
> 				  spin_lock(hugetlb_lock)
>                                    1) PageHuge() == F (freed by case#1 from CPU0)
> 				   2) PageHuge() == T
>                                        PageHugeFreed() == T
>                                        - proceed with replacing the page
> 
> In the case above we retry as the window race is quite small and we have high
> chances to succeed next time.
> 
> With regard to the allocation, we restrict it to the node the page belongs
> to with __GFP_THISNODE, meaning we do not fallback on other node's zones.
> 
> Note that gigantic hugetlb pages are fenced off since there is a cyclic
> dependency between them and alloc_contig_range.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Oscar Salvador <osalvador@suse.de>
> Reviewed-by: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>
> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>

my ack still applies.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs