linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] mm: Skip opportunistic reclaim for dma pinned pages

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Message-ID: <20200625114209.GA7703@casper.infradead.org>
Date:   Thu, 25 Jun 2020 12:42:09 +0100
From:   Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
To:     Chris Wilson <chris@...is-wilson.co.uk>
Cc:     linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        intel-gfx@...ts.freedesktop.org,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
        Jérôme Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>,
        John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>,
        Claudio Imbrenda <imbrenda@...ux.ibm.com>,
        "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
        Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: Skip opportunistic reclaim for dma pinned pages

On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 08:14:17PM +0100, Chris Wilson wrote:
> A side effect of the LRU shrinker not being dma aware is that we will
> often attempt to perform direct reclaim on the persistent group of dma
> pages while continuing to use the dma HW (an issue as the HW may already
> be actively waiting for the next user request), and even attempt to
> reclaim a partially allocated dma object in order to satisfy pinning
> the next user page for that object.
> 
> It is to be expected that such pages are made available for reclaim at
> the end of the dma operation [unpin_user_pages()], and for truly
> longterm pins to be proactively recovered via device specific shrinkers
> [i.e. stop the HW, allow the pages to be returned to the system, and
> then compete again for the memory].

Why are DMA pinned pages still on the LRU list at all?  I never got an
answer to this that made sense to me.  By definition, a page which is
pinned for DMA is being accessed, and needs to at the very least change
position on the LRU list, so just take it off the list when DMA-pinned
and put it back on the list when DMA-unpinned.

This overly complex lease stuff must have some reason for existing, but
I still don't get it.