Thread (89 messages) 89 messages, 12 authors, 2025-09-11

Re: [PATCH v10 06/13] khugepaged: add mTHP support

From: Nico Pache <npache@redhat.com>
Date: 2025-09-08 22:30:22
Also in: linux-doc, linux-mm, lkml

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 4:15 AM Lorenzo Stoakes
[off-list ref] wrote:
You've not responded to a ton of comments, I'm guesing I should assume in
those cases you're acking the comments implicitly? :) Do let me know.
Yes! If they are obvious nits, then implicit ack.

Sorry I wrote my response over a couple of days while making changes
based on the review and trying to figure out a solution to the "creep"
issue, and forgot to thoroughly review all the comments before sending
this out. I'll make sure to go through it again.
On Tue, Sep 02, 2025 at 02:12:38PM -0600, Nico Pache wrote:
quoted
On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 12:30 PM Lorenzo Stoakes
[off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
On Tue, Aug 19, 2025 at 07:41:58AM -0600, Nico Pache wrote:
quoted
Introduce the ability for khugepaged to collapse to different mTHP sizes.
While scanning PMD ranges for potential collapse candidates, keep track
of pages in KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER chunks via a bitmap. Each bit
represents a utilized region of order KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER ptes. If
mTHPs are enabled we remove the restriction of max_ptes_none during the
scan phase so we don't bailout early and miss potential mTHP candidates.

A new function collapse_scan_bitmap is used to perform binary recursion on
the bitmap and determine the best eligible order for the collapse.
A stack struct is used instead of traditional recursion. max_ptes_none
will be scaled by the attempted collapse order to determine how "full" an
order must be before being considered for collapse.

Once we determine what mTHP sizes fits best in that PMD range a collapse
is attempted. A minimum collapse order of 2 is used as this is the lowest
order supported by anon memory.

For orders configured with "always", we perform greedy collapsing
to that order without considering bit density.

If a mTHP collapse is attempted, but contains swapped out, or shared
pages, we don't perform the collapse. This is because adding new entries
can lead to new none pages, and these may lead to constant promotion into
a higher order (m)THP. A similar issue can occur with "max_ptes_none >
HPAGE_PMD_NR/2" due to the fact that a collapse will introduce at least 2x
the number of pages, and on a future scan will satisfy the promotion
condition once again.

For non-PMD collapse we must leave the anon VMA write locked until after
we collapse the mTHP-- in the PMD case all the pages are isolated, but in
the non-PMD case this is not true, and we must keep the lock to prevent
changes to the VMA from occurring.

Currently madv_collapse is not supported and will only attempt PMD
collapse.
Yes I think this has to remain the case unfortunately as we override
sysfs-specified orders for MADV_COLLAPSE and there's no sensible way to
determine what order we ought to be using.
quoted
Signed-off-by: Nico Pache <npache@redhat.com>
You've gone from small incremental changes to a huge one here... for the
sake of reviewer sanity at least, any chance of breaking this up?
I had this as two patches (one for the bitmap and one for implementing
it), but I was asked to squash them :/
Yeah it makes sense to combine those two, but maybe there's a better way of
splitting things out.
I'll give it a shot but most of this patch belongs together in my eyes.
quoted
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---
 include/linux/khugepaged.h |   4 +
 mm/khugepaged.c            | 236 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
 2 files changed, 188 insertions(+), 52 deletions(-)
diff --git a/include/linux/khugepaged.h b/include/linux/khugepaged.h
index eb1946a70cff..d12cdb9ef3ba 100644
--- a/include/linux/khugepaged.h
+++ b/include/linux/khugepaged.h
@@ -1,6 +1,10 @@
 /* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 */
 #ifndef _LINUX_KHUGEPAGED_H
 #define _LINUX_KHUGEPAGED_H
+#define KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER    2
I guess this makes sense as by definition 2 pages is least it could
possibly be.
Order, so 4 pages, 16kB mTHP
Right, misread that! :) sorry. I guess then in fact there is no such thing
as an order-1 mTHP? I did wonder how useful that'd be so makes more sense
Anon memory does not support order 1 THPs, im not sure if there are
any plans do so either.
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+#define KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_NR       (1 << KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER)
Surely KHUGEPAGED_MIN_NR_MTHP_PTES would be more meaningful?
Sure!
Thanks!
quoted
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+#define MAX_MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE  (1 << (ilog2(MAX_PTRS_PER_PTE) - KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER))
This is confusing - size of what?
We need it like this due to ppc64 (and maybe others?), it used to be
based on PMD_ORDER, but some arches fail to compile due to the PMD
size only being known at boot time.
That really sucks. Do please put this context in a comment though (see
below for more discussion on this).
Ok, will do. although with my most recent changes we might just be
able to get rid of this all together.
quoted
This compiles to 9 on arches that have 512 ptes.
so 1 << (9 - 2) == 128
What I'm saying is - what is this expressed in? There's no information on
that here.
In my next implementation its probably going to be gone, but what it
indicates is the bitmap size (128), where each bit equals a range of 4
pages. 128 *4 = 512.
So from what you say I can see it's the number of bits required in the
bitmap, because we're being smart and only bothering to mark entries at a
granularity of minimum mTHP size.

OK so the idea is this is the number of PTE entries per entry in the
bitmap.
Yeah it was an optimization that I was going for, but on second
thought it's probably pretty useless and causes some inaccuracies in
the max_ptes_none scaling and collapsing.
This is KEY missing context. We really need to spell things out here, the
THP code is... confusing :) to put it politely, so we need to be especially
careful to be mega clear.
Yeah its rather confusing, sorry, but I think my newer implementation
that gets rid of this is actually much cleaner.
So please please PLEASE add a comment explaining all this. And clearly
state that the unit here is bits.
ack, I'll be more clear with my newer implementation, and it should be
easier to understand anyways.
quoted
quoted
If it's number of bits surely this should be ilog2(MAX_PTRS_PER_PTE) -
KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER?
This would only be 7? We need a 128 bit bitmap
Again missing context is you're storing bits per minimum mTHP as per above.
quoted
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This seems to be more so 'the maximum value that could contain the bits right?

I think this is just wrong though, see below at DECLARE_BITMAP() stuff.
quoted
+#define MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE  (1 << (HPAGE_PMD_ORDER - KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER))
Hard to know how this relates to MAX_MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE?

I guess this is the current bitmap size indicating all that is possible,
but if these are all #define's what is this accomplishing?
One for compile time one for runtime. Kind of annoying but it was the
easiest solution given the architecture limitations.
OK, this context is fantastic + important for understanding, so let's put
it in a comment :)
Or just get rid of it ;)
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For all - please do not do (1 << xxx)! This can lead to sign-extension bugs at least
in theory, use _BITUL(...), it's neater too.
ack, thanks!
OK sorry, based on David's feedback on this - just use 1UL << xxx here instead.
ack
(An aside that isn't really relevant now but - also I was wrong to suggest
_BITUL() anyway BIT() is The Way (TM), for some reason I had it in my head
that the former was better :P)
quoted
quoted
NIT but the whitespace is all screwed up here.

KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER and KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_NR
quoted
 #include <linux/mm.h>
diff --git a/mm/khugepaged.c b/mm/khugepaged.c
index 074101d03c9d..1ad7e00d3fd6 100644
--- a/mm/khugepaged.c
+++ b/mm/khugepaged.c
@@ -94,6 +94,11 @@ static DEFINE_READ_MOSTLY_HASHTABLE(mm_slots_hash, MM_SLOTS_HASH_BITS);

 static struct kmem_cache *mm_slot_cache __ro_after_init;

+struct scan_bit_state {
+     u8 order;
+     u16 offset;
+};
+
 struct collapse_control {
      bool is_khugepaged;
@@ -102,6 +107,18 @@ struct collapse_control {

      /* nodemask for allocation fallback */
      nodemask_t alloc_nmask;
+
+     /*
+      * bitmap used to collapse mTHP sizes.
+      * 1bit = order KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER mTHP
I'm not sure what this '1bit = xxx' comment means?
A single bit represents 1 << MIN_MTHP_ORDER (4) pages. Ill express that better
Yeah again, this is the missing context that would have helped me feel a
lot less confused here :P
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+      */
+     DECLARE_BITMAP(mthp_bitmap, MAX_MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE);
Hmm this seems wrong.
Should be a bitmap with 128 bits (for 4k page size). Not sure what's wrong here.
quoted
DECLARE_BITMAP(..., val) is expessed as:

#define DECLARE_BITMAP(name,bits) \
        unsigned long name[BITS_TO_LONGS(bits)]

So the 2nd param should be number of bits.

But MAX_MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE is:

(1 << (ilog2(MAX_PTRS_PER_PTE) - KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER))

So typically:

(1 << (9 - 2)) = 128

And BITS_TO_LONGS is defined as:

__KERNEL_DIV_ROUND_UP(nr, BITS_PER_TYPE(long))

So essentially this will be 128 / 8 on a 64-bit system so 16 bytes to
store... 7 bits?
I think you mean 64. 8 would be BYTES_PER_TYPE
quoted
Unless I'm missing something here?
Hmm, unless the DECLARE_BITMAP is being used incorrectly in multiple
places, DECLARE_BITMAP(..., # of bits) is how this is intended to be
used.

I think it's an array of unsigned longs, so each part of the name[] is
already 64 bits. hence the divide.
Yup again this is due to the missing context above.
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+     DECLARE_BITMAP(mthp_bitmap_temp, MAX_MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE);
Same comment as above obviously. But also this is kind of horrible, why are
we putting a copy of this entire bitmap on the stack every time we declare
a cc?
The temp one is used as a scratch pad, Baolin also finds this useful
in his file mTHP collapse useful for another use as well.
Saying 'scratch pad' is really just saying 'temporary' using different
words :) this isn't hugely helpful.
When doing the "recursion", there is no easy way to read the bitmap
between bits N0-N1, so we must manipulate it to extract that data;
however, we still want to preserve the original state of the bitmap.
The temp_bitmap is used to do these bit manipulations while not
destroying the original state. I will see if there's a better way to
read arbitrary ranges of the bitmap so we dont need to have two
copies, but IIRC there is not-- I might have to expand the bitmap API
to include this.
If we _need_ this we should give this a better name, and I also don't know
why we need this on the stack for all collapse_control users. Can't you
just have your 'scratch pad' local to the function that needs it or passed
as a pointer?
If I cant find a solution to the problem above I will look into moving
it to the local stack.
I'm sure it'd be useful to somebody to stick various temporary things in
vm_area_struct for instance, but it'd be hugely egregious to do so...
The reason I didnt see this as a huge issue, is there is only one
global CC that is reused for all khugepaged runs. It's a one time
allocation and does not scale.
quoted
In general khugepaged always uses the same CC, so it doesn't not
having to constantly allocate this.
You're putting a LOT of data on the stack, and kernel stacks are very
delicate, I'm quite concerned about this.

BEFORE:

struct collapse_control {
        bool                       is_khugepaged;        /*     0     1 */

        /* XXX 3 bytes hole, try to pack */

        u32                        node_load[64];        /*     4   256 */

        /* XXX 4 bytes hole, try to pack */

        /* --- cacheline 4 boundary (256 bytes) was 8 bytes ago --- */
        nodemask_t                 alloc_nmask;          /*   264     8 */

        /* size: 272, cachelines: 5, members: 3 */
        /* sum members: 265, holes: 2, sum holes: 7 */
        /* last cacheline: 16 bytes */
};

272 bytes.

AFTER:

struct collapse_control {
        bool                       is_khugepaged;        /*     0     1 */

        /* XXX 3 bytes hole, try to pack */

        u32                        node_load[64];        /*     4   256 */

        /* XXX 4 bytes hole, try to pack */

        /* --- cacheline 4 boundary (256 bytes) was 8 bytes ago --- */
        nodemask_t                 alloc_nmask;          /*   264     8 */
        long unsigned int          mthp_bitmap[2];       /*   272    16 */
        long unsigned int          mthp_bitmap_temp[2];  /*   288    16 */
        struct scan_bit_state      mthp_bitmap_stack[128]; /*   304   512 */

        /* size: 816, cachelines: 13, members: 6 */
        /* sum members: 809, holes: 2, sum holes: 7 */
        /* last cacheline: 48 bytes */
};

816 bytes.

So you're roughly tripling the size of this struct and making this a thing
in all callstacks that reference collapse_control.

Kernel stack is a _super_ finite resource.

I mean I can't really review your stack implementation thing until you've
added a comment to help me understand what you are doing there (sorry but
it's just too fiddly for me to first principles it), but I wonder if we
truly need to be doing this?

I wonder if we can just put this into somewhere allocated...
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+     struct scan_bit_state mthp_bitmap_stack[MAX_MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE];
+};
+
+struct collapse_control khugepaged_collapse_control = {
+     .is_khugepaged = true,
 };
Why are we moving this here?
Because if not it doesn't compile.
A reason as to why this is the case would be helpful :)

But fair enough!
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 /**
@@ -854,10 +871,6 @@ static void khugepaged_alloc_sleep(void)
      remove_wait_queue(&khugepaged_wait, &wait);
 }

-struct collapse_control khugepaged_collapse_control = {
-     .is_khugepaged = true,
-};
-
 static bool collapse_scan_abort(int nid, struct collapse_control *cc)
 {
      int i;
@@ -1136,17 +1149,19 @@ static int alloc_charge_folio(struct folio **foliop, struct mm_struct *mm,

 static int collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address,
                            int referenced, int unmapped,
-                           struct collapse_control *cc)
+                           struct collapse_control *cc, bool *mmap_locked,
+                           unsigned int order, unsigned long offset)
 {
      LIST_HEAD(compound_pagelist);
      pmd_t *pmd, _pmd;
-     pte_t *pte;
+     pte_t *pte = NULL, mthp_pte;
      pgtable_t pgtable;
      struct folio *folio;
      spinlock_t *pmd_ptl, *pte_ptl;
      int result = SCAN_FAIL;
      struct vm_area_struct *vma;
      struct mmu_notifier_range range;
+     unsigned long _address = address + offset * PAGE_SIZE;
This name is really horrible. please name it sensibly.

It feels like address ought to be consistently the base of the THP or mTHP
we wish to collapse, and if we need something PMD aligned for some reason
we should rename _that_ to e.g. pmd_address.

Orrr it could be mthp_address...

Perhaps we could just figure that out here and pass only the
address... aligning to PMD boundary shouldn't be hard/costly.

But it may indicate we need further refactorisation so we don't need to
paper over cracks + pass around a PMD address to do things when that may
not be where the (m)THP range begins.
Ok i'll rename them, but we still need to know the PMD address as we
rely on it for a few key operations.
Can we leave _address and rename address to pmd_address?
No, we absolutely cannot leave _address as '_address', that's terrible and
I'm just not going to live with that.

I know it's trivial, but it's just such a horrid naming convention.
Ok Ill rename it to something else!
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      VM_BUG_ON(address & ~HPAGE_PMD_MASK);
@@ -1155,16 +1170,20 @@ static int collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address,
       * The allocation can take potentially a long time if it involves
       * sync compaction, and we do not need to hold the mmap_lock during
       * that. We will recheck the vma after taking it again in write mode.
+      * If collapsing mTHPs we may have already released the read_lock.
       */
-     mmap_read_unlock(mm);
+     if (*mmap_locked) {
+             mmap_read_unlock(mm);
+             *mmap_locked = false;
+     }

-     result = alloc_charge_folio(&folio, mm, cc, HPAGE_PMD_ORDER);
+     result = alloc_charge_folio(&folio, mm, cc, order);
      if (result != SCAN_SUCCEED)
              goto out_nolock;

      mmap_read_lock(mm);
-     result = hugepage_vma_revalidate(mm, address, true, &vma, cc,
-                                      BIT(HPAGE_PMD_ORDER));
+     *mmap_locked = true;
+     result = hugepage_vma_revalidate(mm, address, true, &vma, cc, BIT(order));
I mean this is kind of going back to previous commits, but it's really ugly
to pass a BIT(xxx) here, is that really necessary? Can't we just pass in
the order?
Yes and no... currently we only ever pass the bit of the current order
so we could get away with it, but to generalize it we want the ability
to pass a bitmap of the available orders. Like in the case of future
madvise_collapse support, we would need to pass a bitmap of possible
orders.
Can we just change that when we need it?
Sure, it was more so that I generalized it for madv_collapse and
khugepaged, but then we dropped madv_collapse support, and I never
undid the change.
'Future proofing' for an possible future implementation detail is just not
how we should implement things.

Right now we don't do that, so let's just pass the order. If in future we
want to change it we can.
ack
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It's also inconsistent with other calls like
e.g. __collapse_huge_page_swapin() below which passes the order.

Same goes obv. for all such invocations.
quoted
      if (result != SCAN_SUCCEED) {
              mmap_read_unlock(mm);
              goto out_nolock;
@@ -1182,13 +1201,14 @@ static int collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address,
               * released when it fails. So we jump out_nolock directly in
               * that case.  Continuing to collapse causes inconsistency.
               */
-             result = __collapse_huge_page_swapin(mm, vma, address, pmd,
-                                                  referenced, HPAGE_PMD_ORDER);
+             result = __collapse_huge_page_swapin(mm, vma, _address, pmd,
+                                                  referenced, order);
              if (result != SCAN_SUCCEED)
                      goto out_nolock;
      }

      mmap_read_unlock(mm);
+     *mmap_locked = false;
      /*
       * Prevent all access to pagetables with the exception of
       * gup_fast later handled by the ptep_clear_flush and the VM
@@ -1198,8 +1218,7 @@ static int collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address,
       * mmap_lock.
       */
      mmap_write_lock(mm);
-     result = hugepage_vma_revalidate(mm, address, true, &vma, cc,
-                                      BIT(HPAGE_PMD_ORDER));
+     result = hugepage_vma_revalidate(mm, address, true, &vma, cc, BIT(order));
      if (result != SCAN_SUCCEED)
              goto out_up_write;
      /* check if the pmd is still valid */
@@ -1210,11 +1229,12 @@ static int collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address,

      anon_vma_lock_write(vma->anon_vma);

-     mmu_notifier_range_init(&range, MMU_NOTIFY_CLEAR, 0, mm, address,
-                             address + HPAGE_PMD_SIZE);
+     mmu_notifier_range_init(&range, MMU_NOTIFY_CLEAR, 0, mm, _address,
+                             _address + (PAGE_SIZE << order));
This _address is horrible. That really does have to change.
quoted
      mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_start(&range);

      pmd_ptl = pmd_lock(mm, pmd); /* probably unnecessary */
+
Odd whitespace...
quoted
      /*
       * This removes any huge TLB entry from the CPU so we won't allow
       * huge and small TLB entries for the same virtual address to
@@ -1228,19 +1248,16 @@ static int collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address,
      mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_end(&range);
      tlb_remove_table_sync_one();

-     pte = pte_offset_map_lock(mm, &_pmd, address, &pte_ptl);
+     pte = pte_offset_map_lock(mm, &_pmd, _address, &pte_ptl);
I see we already have a 'convention' of _ prefix on the pmd param, but two
wrongs don't make a right...
quoted
      if (pte) {
-             result = __collapse_huge_page_isolate(vma, address, pte, cc,
-                                                   &compound_pagelist,
-                                                   HPAGE_PMD_ORDER);
+             result = __collapse_huge_page_isolate(vma, _address, pte, cc,
+                                                   &compound_pagelist, order);
              spin_unlock(pte_ptl);
      } else {
              result = SCAN_PMD_NULL;
      }

      if (unlikely(result != SCAN_SUCCEED)) {
-             if (pte)
-                     pte_unmap(pte);
Why are we removing this?
You're missing some of the comments, I'm guesing for most of the smaller
stuff you're just implicitly acking them but this one was a question :)
Ah, for some of your reviews you comment, then later when you see
another piece you say something like "ah ok this is why", for a lot of
these cases I might have skipped replying because it seems that you
figured it out.
For this one we moved the pte_unmap further down, because if not, we
could be prematurely unmapping a PTE, which is later referenced during
the mTHP collapse, which was not the case when we only did PMD
collapse.
quoted
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              spin_lock(pmd_ptl);
              BUG_ON(!pmd_none(*pmd));
              /*
@@ -1255,17 +1272,17 @@ static int collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address,
      }

      /*
-      * All pages are isolated and locked so anon_vma rmap
-      * can't run anymore.
+      * For PMD collapse all pages are isolated and locked so anon_vma
+      * rmap can't run anymore
       */
-     anon_vma_unlock_write(vma->anon_vma);
+     if (order == HPAGE_PMD_ORDER)
+             anon_vma_unlock_write(vma->anon_vma);
Hmm this is introducing a horrible new way for things to go wrong. And
there's now a whole host of terrible error paths that can go wrong very
easily around rmap locks and yeah, no way we cannot do it this way.

rmap locks are VERY sensitive and the ordering of the locking matters a
great deal (see top of mm/rmap.c). So we have to be SO careful here.

I suggest you simply have a boolean 'anon_vma_locked' or something like
this, and get rid of these horrible additional code paths and the second
order == HPAGE_PMD_ORDER check.

We'll track whether or not the lock is held and thereby needs releasing
that way instead.
You've not responded to this suggestion re: refactoring here.
I think if anything this refactoring adds complexity... we simply
postpone the unlock we normally do, to later if its mTHP collapse,
because we havent fully isolated all the pages (like we do in the PMD
case).
We arent doing anything extremely different other than hold the
already held lock for a little longer. We would still need these order
== HPAGE_PMD_ORDER checks, but just be flipping a flag that says its
locked, essentially adding more complexity for the same outcome.
I'm really not a fan of us arbitrarily messing with rmap locks like this,
and we should very carefully keep track of whether we have/have not
released them.
Its important to note, the code was already doing this, as I stated
above, we simply hold it for longer because we haven't isolated all
the pages.
Again rmap locking is a dangerous area, I've got personal experience of
this (see top of mm/rmap.c for an indication of complexity here as well as
https://kernel.org/doc/html/latest/mm/process_addrs.html).
quoted
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Also, and very importantly - are you 100% sure you can't possibly have a
deadlock or issue beyond this point if you don't release the rmap lock?
I double checked, this was added as a fix to an issue Hugh reported.
quoted
The gap between these callers is rather small, and I see no way that
it could skip the lock/unlock cycle.
We're going to need more than this to be confident, you need to clearly
justify why we won't encounter issues this way.
// WE ARE HOLDING THE LOCK ALREADY
if (order == HPAGE_PMD_ORDER) //ONLY RELEASE IF ITS PMD
        anon_vma_unlock_write(vma->anon_vma);

    result = __collapse_huge_page_copy(pte, folio, pmd, _pmd,
                       vma, _address, pte_ptl,
                       order, &compound_pagelist);
    if (unlikely(result != SCAN_SUCCEED))
        goto out_unlock_anon_vma; //LETS RELEASE THE LOCK IF WE FAIL

if (order == HPAGE_PMD_ORDER) {
      ...
     // NO EXIT PATHS
    } else { /* mTHP collapse */
        ...
       // NO EXIT PATHS
    }

    folio = NULL;

    result = SCAN_SUCCEED;
out_unlock_anon_vma:
    if (order != HPAGE_PMD_ORDER)
        anon_vma_unlock_write(vma->anon_vma); //RELEASE IF IT WASN'T
RELEASED EARLIER

Not sure if this is the verification you are looking for, but I really
dont see how this could go wrong, or how this is any different than
what the khugepaged code is already doing in a number of places.
quoted
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This is veeeery important, as there can be implicit assumptions around
whether or not one can acquire these locks and you basically have to audit
ALL code over which this lock is held.

I'm speaking from hard experience here having bumped into this in various
attempts at work relating to this stuff...
quoted
      result = __collapse_huge_page_copy(pte, folio, pmd, _pmd,
-                                        vma, address, pte_ptl,
-                                        &compound_pagelist, HPAGE_PMD_ORDER);
-     pte_unmap(pte);
+                                        vma, _address, pte_ptl,
+                                        &compound_pagelist, order);
      if (unlikely(result != SCAN_SUCCEED))
-             goto out_up_write;
+             goto out_unlock_anon_vma;
See above...
quoted
      /*
       * The smp_wmb() inside __folio_mark_uptodate() ensures the
@@ -1273,33 +1290,115 @@ static int collapse_huge_page(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address,
       * write.
       */
      __folio_mark_uptodate(folio);
-     pgtable = pmd_pgtable(_pmd);
-
-     _pmd = folio_mk_pmd(folio, vma->vm_page_prot);
-     _pmd = maybe_pmd_mkwrite(pmd_mkdirty(_pmd), vma);
-
-     spin_lock(pmd_ptl);
-     BUG_ON(!pmd_none(*pmd));
-     folio_add_new_anon_rmap(folio, vma, address, RMAP_EXCLUSIVE);
-     folio_add_lru_vma(folio, vma);
-     pgtable_trans_huge_deposit(mm, pmd, pgtable);
-     set_pmd_at(mm, address, pmd, _pmd);
-     update_mmu_cache_pmd(vma, address, pmd);
-     deferred_split_folio(folio, false);
-     spin_unlock(pmd_ptl);
+     if (order == HPAGE_PMD_ORDER) {
+             pgtable = pmd_pgtable(_pmd);
+             _pmd = folio_mk_pmd(folio, vma->vm_page_prot);
+             _pmd = maybe_pmd_mkwrite(pmd_mkdirty(_pmd), vma);
+
+             spin_lock(pmd_ptl);
+             BUG_ON(!pmd_none(*pmd));
I know you're refactoring this, but be good to change this to a
WARN_ON_ONCE(), BUG_ON() is verboten unless it's absolutely definitely
going to be a kernel nuclear event, so worth changing things up as we go.
quoted
Yeah i keep seeing those warning in checkpatch, so Ill go ahead and edit it.
Thanks!
quoted
quoted
quoted
+             folio_add_new_anon_rmap(folio, vma, _address, RMAP_EXCLUSIVE);
+             folio_add_lru_vma(folio, vma);
+             pgtable_trans_huge_deposit(mm, pmd, pgtable);
+             set_pmd_at(mm, address, pmd, _pmd);
+             update_mmu_cache_pmd(vma, address, pmd);
+             deferred_split_folio(folio, false);
+             spin_unlock(pmd_ptl);
+     } else { /* mTHP collapse */
+             mthp_pte = mk_pte(&folio->page, vma->vm_page_prot);
I guess it's a rule that each THP or mTHP range spanned must span one and
only one folio.

Not sure &folio->page has a future though.

Maybe better to use folio_page(folio, 0)?
Ok sounds good I'll use that.
Thanks!
quoted
quoted
quoted
+             mthp_pte = maybe_mkwrite(pte_mkdirty(mthp_pte), vma);
+
+             spin_lock(pmd_ptl);
+             BUG_ON(!pmd_none(*pmd));
having said the above, this is trictly introducing a new BUG_ON() which is
a no-no, please make it a WARN_ON_ONCE().
This one is more important, please do do this.
quoted
quoted
quoted
+             folio_ref_add(folio, (1 << order) - 1);
Again no 1 << x please.
(as per David feedback elsewhere, 1UL << instead)
ack
quoted
quoted
Do we do something similar somewhere else for mthp ref counting? Can we
share code somehow?
quoted
Yeah but IIRC its only like 2 or 3 places that do something like
this... most callers to folio_add_* do things in slightly different
manners. Maybe something to look into for the future, but I think it
will be difficult to generalize it.
OK.
quoted
quoted
quoted
+             folio_add_new_anon_rmap(folio, vma, _address, RMAP_EXCLUSIVE);
+             folio_add_lru_vma(folio, vma);
+             set_ptes(vma->vm_mm, _address, pte, mthp_pte, (1 << order));
Please avoid 1 << order, and I think at this point since you reference it a
bunch of times, just store a local var like nr_pages or sth?
quoted
yeah not a bad idea!
Thanks!
quoted
quoted
quoted
+             update_mmu_cache_range(NULL, vma, _address, pte, (1 << order));
+
+             smp_wmb(); /* make pte visible before pmd */
Can you give some detail as to why this will work here and why it is
necessary?
quoted
Other parts of the kernel do it when setting ptes before updating the
PMD. I'm not sure if it's necessary, but better safe than sorry.
Unfortunately this is a _totally_ unacceptable justification. We can't put
in barriers based on 'better safe than sorry'. You need to analysis this
and determine whether or not it's necessary.

So the comment in pmd_install() seems to give an indication:

        if (likely(pmd_none(*pmd))) {   /* Has another populated it ? */
                mm_inc_nr_ptes(mm);
                /*
                 * Ensure all pte setup (eg. pte page lock and page clearing) are
                 * visible before the pte is made visible to other CPUs by being
                 * put into page tables.
                 *
                 * The other side of the story is the pointer chasing in the page
                 * table walking code (when walking the page table without locking;
                 * ie. most of the time). Fortunately, these data accesses consist
                 * of a chain of data-dependent loads, meaning most CPUs (alpha
                 * being the notable exception) will already guarantee loads are
                 * seen in-order. See the alpha page table accessors for the
                 * smp_rmb() barriers in page table walking code.
                 */
                smp_wmb(); /* Could be smp_wmb__xxx(before|after)_spin_lock */
                pmd_populate(mm, pmd, *pte);
                *pte = NULL;
        }
So this seems to indicate we do need it for some rare edge
cases/arches, and that's why it exists in other callers too.
quoted
quoted
quoted
+             pmd_populate(mm, pmd, pmd_pgtable(_pmd));
If we're updating PTE entriess why do we need to assign the PMD entry?
quoted
We removed the PMD entry for GUP_fast reasons, then we reinstall the
PMD entry after the mTHP is in place. Same as for PMD collapse.
OK a comment to this effect would be useful.
Ok ill add a small comment. feel free to take a look at the failure
handling around __collapse_huge_page_isolate to see another example of
this. We remove the pmd (pmdp_collapse_flush), then if the isolation
fails, we repopulate the original PMD. In the mTHP case, because we
are not installing a new PMD, we still remove the PMD (for gup-fast
reasons), modify the PTE entries within that PMD, then reinstall the
original PMD. This prevent GUP-fast from accessing these PTEs/PMD mid
change.
quoted
quoted
quoted
+             spin_unlock(pmd_ptl);
+     }
This deeply, badly needs to be refactored into something that both shares
code and separates out these two operations.

This function is disgustingly long as it is, and that's not your fault, but
let's try to make things better as we go.
quoted
      folio = NULL;

      result = SCAN_SUCCEED;
+out_unlock_anon_vma:
+     if (order != HPAGE_PMD_ORDER)
+             anon_vma_unlock_write(vma->anon_vma);
Obviously again as above, we need to simplify this and get rid of this
whole bit.
quoted
 out_up_write:
+     if (pte)
+             pte_unmap(pte);
OK I guess you moved this from above down here? Is this a valid place to do this?
Yes if not we were potentially unmapping a pte early.
quoted
quoted
      mmap_write_unlock(mm);
 out_nolock:
+     *mmap_locked = false;
This is kind of horrible, we now have pretty mad logic around who sets
mmap_locked and where.

Can we just do this at the call sites so we avoid that?

I mean anything we do with this is hideous, but that'd be less confusing It
hink.
quoted
      if (folio)
              folio_put(folio);
      trace_mm_collapse_huge_page(mm, result == SCAN_SUCCEED, result);
      return result;
 }

+/* Recursive function to consume the bitmap */
Err... please don't? Kernel stack is a seriously finite resource, we do not
want recursion at all.

But I'm not actually seeing any recursion here? Am I missing something?
Yup this was before I realised it was an iterative implementation :)

Though we are putting load on the stack anyway...
Ill see if I can shrink this load!
quoted
quoted
quoted
+static int collapse_scan_bitmap(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address,
+                     int referenced, int unmapped, struct collapse_control *cc,
+                     bool *mmap_locked, unsigned long enabled_orders)
This is a complicated and confusing function, it requires a comment
describing how it works.
Ok will do!
This is _VERY_ key - I need this I think to be able to sanely review this
code.
ack, im also simplifying it a bit in the next iteration.
quoted
quoted
quoted
+{
+     u8 order, next_order;
+     u16 offset, mid_offset;
+     int num_chunks;
+     int bits_set, threshold_bits;
+     int top = -1;
Err why do we start at -1 then immediately increment it?
You are correct, it was probably a leftover bit from my development
phase. Seems I can just set it to 0 to begin with.
Thanks!
quoted
quoted
quoted
+     int collapsed = 0;
+     int ret;
+     struct scan_bit_state state;
+     bool is_pmd_only = (enabled_orders == (1 << HPAGE_PMD_ORDER));
Extraneous outer parens.
ack
Thanks!
quoted
quoted
quoted
+
+     cc->mthp_bitmap_stack[++top] = (struct scan_bit_state)
+             { HPAGE_PMD_ORDER - KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER, 0 };
This is the same as

        cc->mthp_bitmap_stack[0] = ...;
        top = 1;

No?
quoted
no it would be bitmap_stack[0] = ...
then top goes to -1 (at state =... ), and if we add more items
(next_order) to the stack it would go top = 1 (adds one for each half
of the split)
OK, again going to need that comment to really grok all this... :)
quoted
quoted

This is really horrible. Can we just have a helper function for this
please?
quoted
Seems kinda excessive for 4 lines and one caller.
It's code that's very horrible to understand using a very unusual way of
initialising a struct within the kernel.
ok, ill see if i can clean it up.
And having code be understandable when the compiler can inline for us does
indeed justify this even in the instance of 4 lines and one caller :)
ack
quoted
quoted
Like:

        static int mthp_push_stack(struct collapse_control *cc,
                int index, u8 order, u16 offset)
        {
                struct scan_bit_state *state = &cc->mthp_bitmap_stack[index];

                VM_WARN_ON(index >= MAX_MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE);

                state->order = order;
                state->offset = offset;

                return index + 1;
        }
This would not work in its current state because its ++index in the
current implementation. I would need to refactor, but the general idea
still stands
OK thanks.

Something _like_ this would make things a great deal clearer.
quoted
quoted
And can invoke via:

        top = mthp_push_stack(cc, top, order, offset);

Or pass index as a pointer possibly also.
quoted
+
+     while (top >= 0) {
+             state = cc->mthp_bitmap_stack[top--];
OK so this is the recursive bit...

Oh man this function so needs a comment describing what it does, seriously.

I think honestly for sake of my own sanity I'm going to hold off reviewing
the rest of this until there's something describing the algorithm, in
detail here, above the function.
quoted
It's basically binary recursion with a stack structure, that checks
regions of the bitmap in descending order (ie order 9, order 8, ...)
if we go to the next order we add two items to the stack (left and
right half). I will add a comment describing it at the top of the
function.
Right, to reiterate - this needs a _big_ comment.

I'm sorry to split the review of this patch in two on this, because once
you do that I'm going to inevitably do the deferred review on the
algorithm, but I just feel this is the only sensible way I can determine
whether what you intend to do here makes sense and is correctly
implemented.
Its all good! This pushed me to come up with a better solution, by
both removing the compression into 128 bits, and also come up with a
solution to the creep (although its not the 0/511 that you and David
were talking about).
Kinda need that 'what you intend to do' bit. So it should be an expansive
and detailed comment explicitly explaining the algorithm and why you're
doing it.

Thanks!
quoted
quoted
quoted
+             order = state.order + KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER;
+             offset = state.offset;
+             num_chunks = 1 << (state.order);
+             /* Skip mTHP orders that are not enabled */
+             if (!test_bit(order, &enabled_orders))
+                     goto next_order;
+
+             /* copy the relavant section to a new bitmap */
+             bitmap_shift_right(cc->mthp_bitmap_temp, cc->mthp_bitmap, offset,
+                               MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE);
+
+             bits_set = bitmap_weight(cc->mthp_bitmap_temp, num_chunks);
+             threshold_bits = (HPAGE_PMD_NR - khugepaged_max_ptes_none - 1)
+                             >> (HPAGE_PMD_ORDER - state.order);
+
+             /* Check if the region is "almost full" based on the threshold */
+             if (bits_set > threshold_bits || is_pmd_only
+                     || test_bit(order, &huge_anon_orders_always)) {
+                     ret = collapse_huge_page(mm, address, referenced, unmapped,
+                                              cc, mmap_locked, order,
+                                              offset * KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_NR);
+                     if (ret == SCAN_SUCCEED) {
+                             collapsed += (1 << order);
+                             continue;
+                     }
+             }
+
+next_order:
+             if (state.order > 0) {
+                     next_order = state.order - 1;
+                     mid_offset = offset + (num_chunks / 2);
+                     cc->mthp_bitmap_stack[++top] = (struct scan_bit_state)
+                             { next_order, mid_offset };
+                     cc->mthp_bitmap_stack[++top] = (struct scan_bit_state)
+                             { next_order, offset };
+             }
+     }
+     return collapsed;
+}
+
 static int collapse_scan_pmd(struct mm_struct *mm,
                           struct vm_area_struct *vma,
                           unsigned long address, bool *mmap_locked,
@@ -1307,31 +1406,60 @@ static int collapse_scan_pmd(struct mm_struct *mm,
 {
      pmd_t *pmd;
      pte_t *pte, *_pte;
+     int i;
      int result = SCAN_FAIL, referenced = 0;
      int none_or_zero = 0, shared = 0;
      struct page *page = NULL;
      struct folio *folio = NULL;
      unsigned long _address;
+     unsigned long enabled_orders;
      spinlock_t *ptl;
      int node = NUMA_NO_NODE, unmapped = 0;
+     bool is_pmd_only;
      bool writable = false;
-
+     int chunk_none_count = 0;
+     int scaled_none = khugepaged_max_ptes_none >> (HPAGE_PMD_ORDER - KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_ORDER);
+     unsigned long tva_flags = cc->is_khugepaged ? TVA_KHUGEPAGED : TVA_FORCED_COLLAPSE;
      VM_BUG_ON(address & ~HPAGE_PMD_MASK);

      result = find_pmd_or_thp_or_none(mm, address, &pmd);
      if (result != SCAN_SUCCEED)
              goto out;

+     bitmap_zero(cc->mthp_bitmap, MAX_MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE);
+     bitmap_zero(cc->mthp_bitmap_temp, MAX_MTHP_BITMAP_SIZE);
Having this 'temp' thing on the stack for everyone is just horrid.
As I mention above this serves a very good purpose, and is also
expanded in another series by Baolin to serve another similar purpose
too.
Yeah, I'm not hugely convinced :) responded there.

I can probably give more useful feedback on this once the big comment is
added!
Ok! hopefully I find a solution so I can remove the temp one.
quoted
quoted
quoted
      memset(cc->node_load, 0, sizeof(cc->node_load));
      nodes_clear(cc->alloc_nmask);
+
+     if (cc->is_khugepaged)
+             enabled_orders = thp_vma_allowable_orders(vma, vma->vm_flags,
+                     tva_flags, THP_ORDERS_ALL_ANON);
+     else
+             enabled_orders = BIT(HPAGE_PMD_ORDER);
+
+     is_pmd_only = (enabled_orders == (1 << HPAGE_PMD_ORDER));
This is horrid, can we have a function broken out to do this please?

In general if you keep open coding stuff, just write a static function for
it, the compiler is smart enough to inline.
ok, we do this is a few places so perhaps its the best approach.
quoted
quoted
+
      pte = pte_offset_map_lock(mm, pmd, address, &ptl);
      if (!pte) {
              result = SCAN_PMD_NULL;
              goto out;
      }

-     for (_address = address, _pte = pte; _pte < pte + HPAGE_PMD_NR;
-          _pte++, _address += PAGE_SIZE) {
+     for (i = 0; i < HPAGE_PMD_NR; i++) {
+             /*
+              * we are reading in KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_NR page chunks. if
+              * there are pages in this chunk keep track of it in the bitmap
+              * for mTHP collapsing.
+              */
+             if (i % KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_NR == 0) {
+                     if (i > 0 && chunk_none_count <= scaled_none)
+                             bitmap_set(cc->mthp_bitmap,
+                                        (i - 1) / KHUGEPAGED_MIN_MTHP_NR, 1);
+                     chunk_none_count = 0;
+             }
This whole thing is really confusing and you are not explaining the
algoritm here at all.

This requires a comment, and really this bit should be separated out please.
This used to be its own commit, but multiple people wanted it
squashed... ugh. Which should we go with?
quoted
quoted
+
+             _pte = pte + i;
+             _address = address + i * PAGE_SIZE;
              pte_t pteval = ptep_get(_pte);
              if (is_swap_pte(pteval)) {
                      ++unmapped;
@@ -1354,10 +1482,11 @@ static int collapse_scan_pmd(struct mm_struct *mm,
                      }
              }
              if (pte_none(pteval) || is_zero_pfn(pte_pfn(pteval))) {
+                     ++chunk_none_count;
                      ++none_or_zero;
                      if (!userfaultfd_armed(vma) &&
-                         (!cc->is_khugepaged ||
-                          none_or_zero <= khugepaged_max_ptes_none)) {
+                         (!cc->is_khugepaged || !is_pmd_only ||
+                             none_or_zero <= khugepaged_max_ptes_none)) {
                              continue;
                      } else {
                              result = SCAN_EXCEED_NONE_PTE;
@@ -1453,6 +1582,7 @@ static int collapse_scan_pmd(struct mm_struct *mm,
                                                                   address)))
                      referenced++;
      }
+
      if (!writable) {
              result = SCAN_PAGE_RO;
      } else if (cc->is_khugepaged &&
@@ -1465,10 +1595,12 @@ static int collapse_scan_pmd(struct mm_struct *mm,
 out_unmap:
      pte_unmap_unlock(pte, ptl);
      if (result == SCAN_SUCCEED) {
-             result = collapse_huge_page(mm, address, referenced,
-                                         unmapped, cc);
-             /* collapse_huge_page will return with the mmap_lock released */
-             *mmap_locked = false;
+             result = collapse_scan_bitmap(mm, address, referenced, unmapped, cc,
+                                           mmap_locked, enabled_orders);
+             if (result > 0)
+                     result = SCAN_SUCCEED;
+             else
+                     result = SCAN_FAIL;
We're reusing result as both an enum value and as a storage for unmber
colapsed PTE entries?

Can we just use a new local variable? Thanks
Again you've skipped a ton of review comments here. You need to respond to
everything.
Hmm we could, although it would serve no purpose in my eyes...
nr_collapsed = collapse_scan_bitmap()
if(nr_collapsed > 0)
    result = SCAN_SUCCEED.

To me that is basically the same thing with extra steps. But maybe its
better for a code readiblity standpoint.
quoted
quoted
quoted
      }
 out:
      trace_mm_khugepaged_scan_pmd(mm, folio, writable, referenced,
--
2.50.1
I will review the bitmap/chunk stuff in more detail once the algorithm is
commented.
ok thanks for the review.
No problem! :)
  
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