linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v1] mm: inititalize struct pages when adding a section

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Message-ID: <20180730113029.GM24267@dhcp22.suse.cz>
Date:   Mon, 30 Jul 2018 13:30:29 +0200
From:   Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
To:     David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>
Cc:     linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Pavel Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@...cle.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>,
        Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
        Matthew Wilcox <mawilcox@...rosoft.com>,
        Jérôme Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>,
        Souptick Joarder <jrdr.linux@...il.com>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        Oscar Salvador <osalvador@...hadventures.net>,
        YASUAKI ISHIMATSU <yasu.isimatu@...il.com>,
        Mathieu Malaterre <malat@...ian.org>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>,
        Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@....com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v1] mm: inititalize struct pages when adding a section

On Fri 27-07-18 18:54:54, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> Right now, struct pages are inititalized when memory is onlined, not
> when it is added (since commit d0dc12e86b31 ("mm/memory_hotplug: optimize
> memory hotplug")).
> 
> remove_memory() will call arch_remove_memory(). Here, we usually access
> the struct page to get the zone of the pages.
> 
> So effectively, we access stale struct pages in case we remove memory that
> was never onlined. So let's simply inititalize them earlier, when the
> memory is added. We only have to take care of updating the zone once we
> know it. We can use a dummy zone for that purpose.

I have considered something like this when I was reworking memory
hotplug to not associate struct pages with zone before onlining and I
considered this to be rather fragile. I would really not like to get
back to that again if possible.

> So effectively, all pages will already be initialized and set to
> reserved after memory was added but before it was onlined (and even the
> memblock is added). We only inititalize pages once, to not degrade
> performance.

To be honest, I would rather see d0dc12e86b31 reverted. It is late in
the release cycle and if the patch is buggy then it should be reverted
rather than worked around. I found the optimization not really
convincing back then and this is still the case TBH.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs