Re: [PATCH 06/16] huge tmpfs: shmem_is_huge(vma, inode, index)

From: Yang Shi <shy828301@gmail.com>
To: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>,
	"Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>,
	Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@huawei.com>,
	Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>,
	Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>, Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
	Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
	"Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
	Alexey Gladkov <legion@kernel.org>,
	Chris Wilson <chris@chris-wilson.co.uk>,
	Matthew Auld <matthew.auld@intel.com>,
	Linux FS-devel Mailing List <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-api@vger.kernel.org, Linux MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 06/16] huge tmpfs: shmem_is_huge(vma, inode, index)
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2021 10:57:32 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAHbLzkou+6m+htMNzSQrHfd6U0yURWiewK=Pvg30XSdiW=t+-w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <749bcf72-efbd-d6c-db30-e9ff98242390@google.com>

On Thu, Aug 5, 2021 at 10:43 PM Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 5 Aug 2021, Yang Shi wrote:
> >
> > By rereading the code, I think you are correct. Both cases do work
> > correctly without leaking. And the !CONFIG_NUMA case may carry the
> > huge page indefinitely.
> >
> > I think it is because khugepaged may collapse memory for another NUMA
> > node in the next loop, so it doesn't make too much sense to carry the
> > huge page, but it may be an optimization for !CONFIG_NUMA case.
>
> Yes, that is its intention.
>
> >
> > However, as I mentioned in earlier email the new pcp implementation
> > could cache THP now, so we might not need keep this convoluted logic
> > anymore. Just free the page if collapse is failed then re-allocate
> > THP. The carried THP might improve the success rate a little bit but I
> > doubt how noticeable it would be, may be not worth for the extra
> > complexity at all.
>
> It would be great if the new pcp implementation is good enough to
> get rid of khugepaged's confusing NUMA=y/NUMA=n differences; and all
> the *hpage stuff too, I hope.  That would be a welcome cleanup.

 The other question is if that optimization is worth it nowadays or
not. I bet not too many users build NUMA=n kernel nowadays even though
the kernel is actually running on a non-NUMA machine. Some small
devices may run NUMA=n kernel, but I don't think they actually use
THP. So such code complexity could be removed from this point of view
too.

>
> > > > Collapse failure is not uncommon and leaking huge pages gets noticed.
>
> After writing that, I realized how I'm almost always testing a NUMA=y
> kernel (though on non-NUMA machines), and seldom try the NUMA=n build.
> So did so to check no leak, indeed; but was surprised, when comparing
> vmstats, that the NUMA=n run had done 5 times as much thp_collapse_alloc
> as the NUMA=y run.  I've merely made a note to look into that one day:
> maybe it was just a one-off oddity, or maybe the incrementing of stats
> is wrong down one path or the other.

Yeah, probably.

>
> Hugh