linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] mm: don't zero ballooned pages

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Date:   Mon, 31 Jul 2017 15:41:49 +0800
From:   Wei Wang <wei.w.wang@...el.com>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
CC:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        virtualization@...ts.linux-foundation.org, mst@...hat.com,
        mawilcox@...rosoft.com, dave.hansen@...el.com,
        akpm@...ux-foundation.org, zhenwei.pi@...runcloud.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: don't zero ballooned pages

On 07/31/2017 02:55 PM, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Mon 31-07-17 12:13:33, Wei Wang wrote:
>> Ballooned pages will be marked as MADV_DONTNEED by the hypervisor and
>> shouldn't be given to the host ksmd to scan.
> Could you point me where this MADV_DONTNEED is done, please?

Sure. It's done in the hypervisor when the balloon pages are received.

Please see line 40 at
https://github.com/qemu/qemu/blob/master/hw/virtio/virtio-balloon.c


>
>> Therefore, it is not
>> necessary to zero ballooned pages, which is very time consuming when
>> the page amount is large. The ongoing fast balloon tests show that the
>> time to balloon 7G pages is increased from ~491ms to 2.8 seconds with
>> __GFP_ZERO added. So, this patch removes the flag.
> Please make it obvious that this is a revert of bb01b64cfab7
> ("mm/balloon_compaction.c: enqueue zero page to balloon device").
>
>

Ok, will do.

Best,
Wei