Re: [PATCH RFC v4 08/13] mm/memory_hotplug: Introduce offline_and_remove_memory()

[David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>]

On 02.03.20 13:48, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Tue 25-02-20 15:27:28, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> On 25.02.20 15:11, Michal Hocko wrote:
>>> On Thu 12-12-19 18:11:32, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>> virtio-mem wants to offline and remove a memory block once it unplugged
>>>> all subblocks (e.g., using alloc_contig_range()). Let's provide
>>>> an interface to do that from a driver. virtio-mem already supports to
>>>> offline partially unplugged memory blocks. Offlining a fully unplugged
>>>> memory block will not require to migrate any pages. All unplugged
>>>> subblocks are PageOffline() and have a reference count of 0 - so
>>>> offlining code will simply skip them.
>>>>
>>>> All we need an interface to trigger the "offlining" and the removing in a
>>>> single operation - to make sure the memory block cannot get onlined by
>>>> user space again before it gets removed.
>>>
>>> Why does that matter? Is it really likely that the userspace would
>>> interfere? What would be the scenario?
>>
>> I guess it's not that relevant after all (I think this comment dates
>> back to the times where we didn't have try_remove_memory() and could
>> actually BUG_ON() in remove_memory() if there would have been a race).
>> Can drop that part.
>>
>>>
>>> Or is still mostly about not requiring callers to open code this general
>>> patter?
>>
>> From kernel module context, I cannot get access to the actual memory
>> block device (find_memory_block()) and call the device_unregister().
>>
>> Especially, also the device hotplug lock is not exported. So this is a
>> clean helper function to be used from kernel module context. (e.g., also
>> hyper-v showed interest for using that)
> 
> Fair enough.
> 

I'll send a v1 shortly, I rephrased the description to make this clear.
Thanks!

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb