Thread (21 messages) 21 messages, 4 authors, 2012-09-13

Re: [PATCH v2 10/10] thp: implement refcounting for huge zero page

From: Kirill A. Shutemov <hidden>
Date: 2012-09-10 14:50:20
Also in: lkml

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 04:48:07PM +0200, Eric Dumazet wrote:
On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 17:44 +0300, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
quoted
On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 04:02:39PM +0200, Eric Dumazet wrote:
quoted
On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 16:13 +0300, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
quoted
From: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <redacted>

H. Peter Anvin doesn't like huge zero page which sticks in memory forever
after the first allocation. Here's implementation of lockless refcounting
for huge zero page.
...
quoted
+static unsigned long get_huge_zero_page(void)
+{
+	struct page *zero_page;
+retry:
+	if (likely(atomic_inc_not_zero(&huge_zero_refcount)))
+		return ACCESS_ONCE(huge_zero_pfn);
+
+	zero_page = alloc_pages(GFP_TRANSHUGE | __GFP_ZERO, HPAGE_PMD_ORDER);
+	if (!zero_page)
+		return 0;
+	if (cmpxchg(&huge_zero_pfn, 0, page_to_pfn(zero_page))) {
+		__free_page(zero_page);
+		goto retry;
+	}
This might break if preemption can happen here ?

The second thread might loop forever because huge_zero_refcount is 0,
and huge_zero_pfn not zero.
I fail to see why the second thread might loop forever. Long time yes, but
forever?

Yes, disabling preemption before alloc_pages() and enabling after
atomic_set() looks reasonable. Thanks.
If you have one online cpu, and the second thread is real time or
something like that, it wont give cpu back to preempted thread.
Okay, I see. I'll update the patch.

-- 
 Kirill A. Shutemov

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