linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/3] mm,thp,rmap: rework the use of subpages

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Date:   Tue, 22 Nov 2022 16:30:53 +0000
From:   Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@...gle.com>
To:     Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>
Cc:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@...temov.name>,
        David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>, Peter Xu <peterx@...hat.com>,
        Yang Shi <shy828301@...il.com>,
        John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>,
        Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@...cle.com>,
        Sidhartha Kumar <sidhartha.kumar@...cle.com>,
        Muchun Song <songmuchun@...edance.com>,
        Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@...wei.com>,
        Naoya Horiguchi <naoya.horiguchi@...ux.dev>,
        Mina Almasry <almasrymina@...gle.com>,
        James Houghton <jthoughton@...gle.com>,
        "Zach O'Keefe" <zokeefe@...gle.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] mm,thp,rmap: rework the use of subpages_mapcount

On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 01:55:39AM -0500, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 05:57:42AM +0000, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 01:52:23PM -0500, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> > > That leaves clearing writeback. This can't hold the page lock due to
> > > the atomic context, so currently we need to take lock_page_memcg() as
> > > the lock of last resort.
> > > 
> > > I wonder if we can have cgroup take the xalock instead: writeback
> > > ending on file pages always acquires the xarray lock. Swap writeback
> > > currently doesn't, but we could make it so (swap_address_space).
> > > 
> > > The only thing that gives me pause is the !mapping check in
> > > __folio_end_writeback. File and swapcache pages usually have mappings,
> > > and truncation waits for writeback to finish before axing
> > > page->mapping. So AFAICS this can only happen if we call end_writeback
> > > on something that isn't under writeback - in which case the test_clear
> > > will fail and we don't update the stats anyway. But I want to be sure.
> > > 
> > > Does anybody know from the top of their heads if a page under
> > > writeback could be without a mapping in some weird cornercase?
> > 
> > I can't think of such a corner case.  We should always wait for
> > writeback to finish before removing the page from the page cache;
> > the writeback bit used to be (and kind of still is) an implicit
> > reference to the page, which means that we can't remove the page
> > cache's reference to the page without waiting for writeback.
> 
> Great, thanks!
> 
> > > If we could ensure that the NR_WRITEBACK decs are always protected by
> > > the xalock, we could grab it from mem_cgroup_move_account(), and then
> > > kill lock_page_memcg() altogether.
> > 
> > I'm not thrilled by this idea, but I'm not going to veto it.
> 
> Ok, I'm also happy to drop this one.
> 
> Certainly, the rmap one is the lowest-hanging fruit. I have the patch
> rebased against Hugh's series in mm-unstable; I'll wait for that to
> settle down, and then send an updated version to Andrew.

I am planning to initiate the deprecation of the move charge
functionality of v1. So I would say let's go with low hanging fruit for
now and let slow process of deprecation remove the remaining cases.