On Tue, Feb 02, 2021 at 01:39:29PM +0100, David Hildenbrand wrote:

On 02.02.21 13:35, Will Deacon wrote:

quoted

On Tue, Feb 02, 2021 at 12:32:15PM +0000, Will Deacon wrote:

quoted

On Tue, Feb 02, 2021 at 09:41:53AM +0530, Anshuman Khandual wrote:

quoted

pfn_valid() validates a pfn but basically it checks for a valid struct page
backing for that pfn. It should always return positive for memory ranges
backed with struct page mapping. But currently pfn_valid() fails for all
ZONE_DEVICE based memory types even though they have struct page mapping.

pfn_valid() asserts that there is a memblock entry for a given pfn without
MEMBLOCK_NOMAP flag being set. The problem with ZONE_DEVICE based memory is
that they do not have memblock entries. Hence memblock_is_map_memory() will
invariably fail via memblock_search() for a ZONE_DEVICE based address. This
eventually fails pfn_valid() which is wrong. memblock_is_map_memory() needs
to be skipped for such memory ranges. As ZONE_DEVICE memory gets hotplugged
into the system via memremap_pages() called from a driver, their respective
memory sections will not have SECTION_IS_EARLY set.

Normal hotplug memory will never have MEMBLOCK_NOMAP set in their memblock
regions. Because the flag MEMBLOCK_NOMAP was specifically designed and set
for firmware reserved memory regions. memblock_is_map_memory() can just be
skipped as its always going to be positive and that will be an optimization
for the normal hotplug memory. Like ZONE_DEVICE based memory, all normal
hotplugged memory too will not have SECTION_IS_EARLY set for their sections

Skipping memblock_is_map_memory() for all non early memory sections would
fix pfn_valid() problem for ZONE_DEVICE based memory and also improve its
performance for normal hotplug memory as well.

Hmm. Although I follow your logic, this does seem to rely on an awful lot of
assumptions to continue to hold true as the kernel evolves. In particular,
how do we ensure that early sections are always fully backed with

Sorry, typo here:       ^^^ should be *non-early* sections.

It might be a good idea to have a look at generic
include/linux/mmzone.h:pfn_valid()

The generic implementation already makes assumptions that aren't true on
arm64, so that's why we've ended up with our own implementation. But the
patches here put us in a position where I worry that pfn_valid() may return
'true' in future for cases where the underlying struct page is either
non-existent or bogus, and debugging those failures really sucks. We had a
raft of those back when NOMAP was introduced and I don't want to re-live
that experience.

As I expressed already, long term we should really get rid of the arm64
variant and rather special-case the generic one. Then we won't go out of
sync - just as it happened with ZONE_DEVICE handling here.

Why does this have to be long term? This ZONE_DEVICE stuff could be the
carrot on the stick :)

Will