linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH] mm: shm: round up tmpfs size to huge page size when huge=always

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Date:   Tue, 10 Oct 2017 01:54:27 +0800
From:   "Yang Shi" <yang.s@...baba-inc.com>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
Cc:     "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@...temov.name>,
        kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com, hughd@...gle.com,
        akpm@...ux-foundation.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] mm: shm: round up tmpfs size to huge page size when
 huge=always



On 10/9/17 10:26 AM, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Tue 10-10-17 00:43:31, Yang Shi wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 10/8/17 11:48 PM, Michal Hocko wrote:
>>> On Sun 08-10-17 15:56:51, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
>>>> On Sat, Oct 07, 2017 at 04:22:10AM +0800, Yang Shi wrote:
>>>>> When passing "huge=always" option for mounting tmpfs, THP is supposed to
>>>>> be allocated all the time when it can fit, but when the available space is
>>>>> smaller than the size of THP (2MB on x86), shmem fault handler still tries
>>>>> to allocate huge page every time, then fallback to regular 4K page
>>>>> allocation, i.e.:
>>>>>
>>>>> 	# mount -t tmpfs -o huge,size=3000k tmpfs /tmp
>>>>> 	# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test bs=1k count=2048
>>>>> 	# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test1 bs=1k count=2048
>>>>>
>>>>> The last dd command will handle 952 times page fault handler, then exit
>>>>> with -ENOSPC.
>>>>>
>>>>> Rounding up tmpfs size to THP size in order to use THP with "always"
>>>>> more efficiently. And, it will not wast too much memory (just allocate
>>>>> 511 extra pages in worst case).
>>>>
>>>> Hm. I don't think it's good idea to silently increase size of fs.
>>>
>>> Agreed!
>>>
>>>> Maybe better just refuse to mount with huge=always for too small fs?
>>>
>>> We cannot we simply have the remaining page !THP? What is the actual
> 
> ups s@We@Why@
> 
>>> problem?
>>
>> The remaining pages can be !THP, it will fall back to regular 4k pages when
>> the available space is less than THP size.
>>
>> I just wonder it sounds not make sense to *not* mount tmpfs with THP size
>> alignment when "huge=always" is passed.
> 
> yes failure seems overly excessive reaction to me.
> 
>> I guess someone would like to assume all allocation in tmpfs with
>> "huge=always" should be THP.
> 
> Nobody can assume that because THP pages can be broken up at any point
> in time. We have hugetlb to provide a guarantee
> 
>> But, they might not be fully aware of in some
>> corner cases THP might be not used, for example, the remaining space is less
>> then THP size, then some unexpected performance degrade might be perceived.
>>
>> So, why not we do the mount correctly at the first place. It could be
>> delegated to the administrator, but it should be better to give some hint
>> from kernel side.
> 
> Because we are not trying to be more clever than the user. I still do
> not see what is the actual problem you are trying to fix to be honest.

Just try to provide a warning or hint to the users that it'd better to 
mount tmpfs with THP size aligned when "huge=always" is passed to avoid 
some unexpected performance degrade.

Resizing or failure to mount might be overkill, documenting it might be 
good enough.

Thanks,
Yang

>