Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 11 Aug 2023 17:17:02 +0200 | From | David Hildenbrand <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH mm-unstable v1] mm: add a total mapcount for large folios |
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On 11.08.23 17:03, Peter Xu wrote: > On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 11:59:25PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote: >> On 10.08.23 23:54, Matthew Wilcox wrote: >>> On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 05:48:19PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote: >>>>> Yes, that comment from Hugh primarily discusses how we could possibly >>>>> optimize the loop, and if relying on folio_nr_pages_mapped() to reduce the >>>>> iterations would be racy. As far as I can see, there are cases where "it >>>>> would be certainly a bad idea" :) >>>> >>>> Is the race described about mapcount being changed right after it's read? >>>> Are you aware of anything specific that will be broken, and will be fixed >>>> with this patch? >>> >>> The problem is that people check the mapcount while holding no locks; >>> not the PTL, not the page lock. So it's an unfixable race. >>> >>>> Having a total mapcount does sound helpful if partial folio is common >>>> indeed. >>>> >>>> I'm curious whether that'll be so common after the large anon folio work - >>>> isn't it be sad if partial folio will be a norm? It sounds to me that's >>>> the case when small page sizes should be used.. and it's prone to waste? >>> >>> The problem is that entire_mapcount isn't really entire_mapcount. >>> It's pmd_mapcount. I have had thoughts about using it as entire_mapcount, >>> but it gets gnarly when people do partial unmaps. So the _usual_ case >>> ends up touching every struct page. Which sucks. Also it's one of the >>> things which stands in the way of shrinking struct page. >> >> Right, so one current idea is to have a single total_mapcount and look into >> removing the subpage mapcounts (which will require first removing >> _nr_pages_mapped, because that's still one of the important users). >> >> Until we get there, also rmap code has to do eventually "more tracking" and >> might, unfortunately, end up slower. >> >>> >>> But it's kind of annoying to explain all of this to you individually. >>> There have been hundreds of emails about it over the last months on >>> this mailing list. It would be nice if you could catch up instead of >>> jumping in. >> >> To be fair, a lot of the details are not readily available and in the heads >> of selected people :) >> >> Peter, if you're interested, we can discuss the current plans, issues and >> ideas offline! > > Thanks for offering help, David. > > Personally I still am unclear yet on why entire_mapcount cannot be used as > full-folio mapcounts, and why "partial unmap" can happen a lot (I don't > expect), but yeah I can try to catch up to educate myself first.
Using fork() is the easiest way. mremap(), MADV_DONTNEED, munmap, ...
You might end up having to scan page tables and/or the rmap to figure out which mapcount to adjust, which we should absolutely avoid.
> The only issue regarding an offline sync-up is that even if David will help > Peter on catching up the bits, it'll not scale when another Peter2 had the > same question.. So David, rather than I waste your time on helping one > person, let me try to catch up with the public threads - I'm not sure how > far I can go myself;
Sure. But note that it's a moving target, and some discussions have been going on for a long time. I recall there were various discussions, including LSF/MM, mm biweekly meeting, and more. So even if you scan through all that, you might either get outdated or incomplete information.
-- Cheers,
David / dhildenb
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