linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] mm/memory_hotplug: drain per-cpu pages again during memory offline

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Message-ID: <CA+CK2bDON8A5AmKqPFWOytP-B29U-YAc9maQAvV-oGffaek6Yg@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Fri, 4 Sep 2020 10:25:02 -0400
From:   Pavel Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@...een.com>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>
Cc:     David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm/memory_hotplug: drain per-cpu pages again during
 memory offline

> Another alternative would be to enable/disable static branch only from
> users who really care but this is quite tricky because how do you tell
> you need or not? It seems that alloc_contig_range would be just fine
> with a weaker semantic because it would "only" to a spurious failure.
> Memory hotplug on the other hand really needs to have a point where
> nobody interferes with the offlined memory so it could ask for a
> stronger semantic.
>
> Yet another option would be to make draining stronger and actually
> guarantee there are no in-flight pages to be freed to the pcp list.
> One way would be to tweak pcp->high and implement a strong barrier
> (IPI?) to sync with all CPUs. Quite expensive, especially when there are
> many draining requests (read cma users because hotplug doesn't really
> matter much as it happens seldom).
>
> So no nice&cheap solution I can think of...

I think start_isolate_page_range() should not be doing page draining
at all. It should isolate ranges, meaning set appropriate flags, but
draining should be performed by the users when appropriate: next to
lru_add_drain_all() calls both in CMA and hotplug.
Currently, the way start_isolate_page_range() drains pages is very
inefficient. It calls drain_all_pages() for every valid page block,
which is a slow call as it starts a thread per cpu, and waits for
those threads to finish before returning.

We could optimize by moving the drain_all_pages() calls from
set_migratetype_isolate() to start_isolate_page_range() and call it
once for every different zone, but both current users of this
interface guarantee that all pfns [start_pfn, end_pfn] are within the
same zone, and I think we should keep it this way, so again the extra
traversal is going to be overhead overhead.

This way we will have on average only a single drain per hot-remove
(instead of one per block), and also it is going to be symmetric only
in one place. Faster hot-remove and cma alloc, and no race, imo
win-win.

Pasha