Re: [PATCH v22 6/9] mm: hugetlb: alloc the vmemmap pages associated with each HugeTLB page

When we free a HugeTLB page to the buddy allocator, we need to allocate
the vmemmap pages associated with it. However, we may not be able to
allocate the vmemmap pages when the system is under memory pressure. In
this case, we just refuse to free the HugeTLB page. This changes behavior
in some corner cases as listed below:

 1) Failing to free a huge page triggered by the user (decrease nr_pages).

    User needs to try again later.

 2) Failing to free a surplus huge page when freed by the application.

    Try again later when freeing a huge page next time.

 3) Failing to dissolve a free huge page on ZONE_MOVABLE via
    offline_pages().

    This can happen when we have plenty of ZONE_MOVABLE memory, but
    not enough kernel memory to allocate vmemmmap pages.  We may even
    be able to migrate huge page contents, but will not be able to
    dissolve the source huge page.  This will prevent an offline
    operation and is unfortunate as memory offlining is expected to
    succeed on movable zones.  Users that depend on memory hotplug
    to succeed for movable zones should carefully consider whether the
    memory savings gained from this feature are worth the risk of
    possibly not being able to offline memory in certain situations.

 4) Failing to dissolve a huge page on CMA/ZONE_MOVABLE via
    alloc_contig_range() - once we have that handling in place. Mainly
    affects CMA and virtio-mem.

    Similar to 3). virito-mem will handle migration errors gracefully.
    CMA might be able to fallback on other free areas within the CMA
    region.

Vmemmap pages are allocated from the page freeing context. In order for
those allocations to be not disruptive (e.g. trigger oom killer)
__GFP_NORETRY is used. hugetlb_lock is dropped for the allocation
because a non sleeping allocation would be too fragile and it could fail
too easily under memory pressure. GFP_ATOMIC or other modes to access
memory reserves is not used because we want to prevent consuming
reserves under heavy hugetlb freeing.

Signed-off-by: Muchun Song <redacted>
---
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst    |  8 ++
 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst | 13 ++++
 include/linux/hugetlb.h                         |  3 +
 include/linux/mm.h                              |  2 +
 mm/hugetlb.c                                    | 98 +++++++++++++++++++++----
 mm/hugetlb_vmemmap.c                            | 34 +++++++++
 mm/hugetlb_vmemmap.h                            |  6 ++
 mm/migrate.c                                    |  5 +-
 mm/sparse-vmemmap.c                             | 75 ++++++++++++++++++-
 9 files changed, 227 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst
index f7b1c7462991..6988895d09a8 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst

@@ -60,6 +60,10 @@ HugePages_Surp
         the pool above the value in ``/proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages``. The
         maximum number of surplus huge pages is controlled by
         ``/proc/sys/vm/nr_overcommit_hugepages``.
+	Note: When the feature of freeing unused vmemmap pages associated
+	with each hugetlb page is enabled, the number of surplus huge pages
+	may be temporarily larger than the maximum number of surplus huge
+	pages when the system is under memory pressure.
 Hugepagesize
 	is the default hugepage size (in Kb).
 Hugetlb

@@ -80,6 +84,10 @@ returned to the huge page pool when freed by a task.  A user with root
 privileges can dynamically allocate more or free some persistent huge pages
 by increasing or decreasing the value of ``nr_hugepages``.
 
+Note: When the feature of freeing unused vmemmap pages associated with each
+hugetlb page is enabled, we can fail to free the huge pages triggered by
+the user when ths system is under memory pressure.  Please try again later.
+
 Pages that are used as huge pages are reserved inside the kernel and cannot
 be used for other purposes.  Huge pages cannot be swapped out under
 memory pressure.

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst
index 05d51d2d8beb..c6bae2d77160 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst

@@ -357,6 +357,19 @@ creates ZONE_MOVABLE as following.
    Unfortunately, there is no information to show which memory block belongs
    to ZONE_MOVABLE. This is TBD.
 
+   Memory offlining can fail when dissolving a free huge page on ZONE_MOVABLE
+   and the feature of freeing unused vmemmap pages associated with each hugetlb
+   page is enabled.
+
+   This can happen when we have plenty of ZONE_MOVABLE memory, but not enough
+   kernel memory to allocate vmemmmap pages.  We may even be able to migrate
+   huge page contents, but will not be able to dissolve the source huge page.
+   This will prevent an offline operation and is unfortunate as memory offlining
+   is expected to succeed on movable zones.  Users that depend on memory hotplug
+   to succeed for movable zones should carefully consider whether the memory
+   savings gained from this feature are worth the risk of possibly not being
+   able to offline memory in certain situations.
+
 .. note::
    Techniques that rely on long-term pinnings of memory (especially, RDMA and
    vfio) are fundamentally problematic with ZONE_MOVABLE and, therefore, memory

diff --git a/include/linux/hugetlb.h b/include/linux/hugetlb.h
index d523a345dc86..d3abaaec2a22 100644
--- a/include/linux/hugetlb.h
+++ b/include/linux/hugetlb.h

@@ -525,6 +525,7 @@ unsigned long hugetlb_get_unmapped_area(struct file *file, unsigned long addr,
  *	code knows it has only reference.  All other examinations and
  *	modifications require hugetlb_lock.
  * HPG_freed - Set when page is on the free lists.
+ * HPG_vmemmap_optimized - Set when the vmemmap pages of the page are freed.
  *	Synchronization: hugetlb_lock held for examination and modification.