Date:   Thu, 2 Jun 2022 10:47:29 +0200
From:   David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>
To:     Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@...wei.com>
Cc:     ying.huang@...el.com, hch@....de, dhowells@...hat.com,
        cl@...ux.com, linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        akpm@...ux-foundation.org, mike.kravetz@...cle.com,
        naoya.horiguchi@....com, Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/4] mm/migration: remove unneeded lock page and
 PageMovable check

On 02.06.22 09:40, Miaohe Lin wrote:
> On 2022/6/1 18:31, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> On 31.05.22 14:37, Miaohe Lin wrote:
>>> On 2022/5/31 19:59, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>> Sorry for the late reply, was on vacation.
>>>
>>> That's all right. Hope you have a great time. ;)
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> But for isolated page, PageLRU is cleared. So when the isolated page is released, __clear_page_lru_flags
>>>>>>> won't be called. So we have to clear the PG_active and PG_unevictable here manully. So I think
>>>>>>> this code block works. Or am I miss something again?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Let's assume the following: page as freed by the owner and we enter
>>>>>> unmap_and_move().
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> #1: enter unmap_and_move() // page_count is 1
>>>>>> #2: enter isolate_movable_page() // page_count is 1
>>>>>> #2: get_page_unless_zero() // page_count is now 2
>>>>>> #1: if (page_count(page) == 1) { // does not trigger
>>>>>> #2: put_page(page); // page_count is now 1
>>>>>> #1: put_page(page); // page_count is now 0 -> freed
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> #1 will trigger __put_page() -> __put_single_page() ->
>>>>>> __page_cache_release() will not clear the flags because it's not an LRU
>>>>>> page at that point in time, right (-> isolated)?
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, you're right. I thought the old page will be freed via putback_lru_page which will
>>>>> set PageLRU back instead of put_page directly. So if the above race occurs, PG_active and
>>>>> PG_unevictable will remain set while page goes to the buddy and check_free_page will complain
>>>>> about it. But it seems this is never witnessed?
>>>>
>>>> Maybe
>>>>
>>>> a) we were lucky so far and didn't trigger it
>>>> b) the whole code block is dead code because we are missing something
>>>> c) we are missing something else :)
>>>
>>> I think I found the things we missed in another email [1].
>>> [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/948ea45e-3b2b-e16c-5b8c-4c34de0ea593@huawei.com/
>>>
>>> Paste the main content of [1] here:
>>>
>>> "
>>> There are 3 cases in unmap_and_move:
>>>
>>> 1.page is freed through "if (page_count(page) == 1)" code block. This works
>>> as PG_active and PG_unevictable are cleared here.
>>>
>>> 2. Failed to migrate the page. The page won't be release so we don't care about it.
>>
>> Right, page is un-isolated.
>>
>>>
>>> 3. The page is migrated successfully. The PG_active and PG_unevictable are cleared
>>> via folio_migrate_flags():
>>>
>>> 	if (folio_test_clear_active(folio)) {
>>> 		VM_BUG_ON_FOLIO(folio_test_unevictable(folio), folio);
>>> 		folio_set_active(newfolio);
>>> 	} else if (folio_test_clear_unevictable(folio))
>>> 		folio_set_unevictable(newfolio);
>>
>> Right.
>>
>>>
>>> For the above race case, the page won't be freed through "if (page_count(page) == 1)" code block.
>>> It will just be migrated and freed via put_page() after folio_migrate_flags() having cleared PG_active
>>> and PG_unevictable.
>>> "
>>> Or Am I miss something again? :)
>>
>> For #1, I'm still not sure what would happen on a speculative reference.
>>
>> It's worth summarizing that
>>
>> a) free_pages_prepare() will clear both flags via page->flags &=
>> ~PAGE_FLAGS_CHECK_AT_PREP;
>>
>> b) free_pages_prepare() will bail out if any flag is set in
>> check_free_page().
>>
>> As we've never seen b) in the wild, this certainly has low priority, and
>> maybe it really cannot happen right now.
>>
>> However, maybe really allowing these flags to be set when freeing the
>> page and removing the "page_count(page) == 1" case from migration code
>> would be the clean thing to do.
> 
> IMHO, check_free_page is used to catch possible problem. There's the comment of PAGE_FLAGS_CHECK_AT_FREE:
> 
> /*
>  * Flags checked when a page is freed.  Pages being freed should not have
>  * these flags set.  If they are, there is a problem.
>  */
> #define PAGE_FLAGS_CHECK_AT_FREE
> 
> There might be an assumption: when page is freed, it shouldn't be an active or unevictable page. It should be
> inactive and evictable. So allowing these flags to be set when freeing the page might not be a good idea?

Yeah, and we'd be lifting that restriction because there is good reason
to do so.

Maybe we *could* special case for isolated pages; however, that adds
runtime overhead. Of course, we could perform different checks for e.g.,
DEBUG_VM vs !DEBUG_VM.

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb

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