linux-kernel - Re: [Question]: major faults are still triggered after mlockall when numa balancing

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Message-ID: <87h6lunqqw.fsf@linux.ibm.com>
Date:   Fri, 10 Nov 2023 10:34:23 +0530
From:   "Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@...ux.ibm.com>
To:     "zhangpeng (AS)" <zhangpeng362@...wei.com>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     akpm@...ux-foundation.org, Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        lstoakes@...il.com, hughd@...gle.com, david@...hat.com,
        fengwei.yin@...el.com, vbabka@...e.cz, peterz@...radead.org,
        mgorman@...e.de, mingo@...hat.com, riel@...hat.com,
        ying.huang@...el.com, hannes@...xchg.org,
        Nanyong Sun <sunnanyong@...wei.com>,
        Kefeng Wang <wangkefeng.wang@...wei.com>
Subject: Re: [Question]: major faults are still triggered after mlockall
 when numa balancing

"zhangpeng (AS)" <zhangpeng362@...wei.com> writes:

> Hi everyone,
>
> There is a performance issue that has been bothering us recently.
> This problem can reproduce in the latest mainline version (Linux 6.6).
>
> We use mlockall(MCL_CURRENT | MCL_FUTURE) in the user mode process
> to avoid performance problems caused by major fault.
>
> There is a stage in numa fault which will set pte as 0 in do_numa_page() :
> ptep_modify_prot_start() will clear the vmf->pte, until
> ptep_modify_prot_commit() assign a value to the vmf->pte.
>
> For the data segment of the user-mode program, the global variable area
> is a private mapping. After the pagecache is loaded, the private
> anonymous page is generated after the COW is triggered. Mlockall can
> lock COW pages (anonymous pages), but the original file pages cannot
> be locked and may be reclaimed. If the global variable (private anon page)
> is accessed when vmf->pte is zero which is concurrently set by numa fault,
> a file page fault will be triggered.
>
> At this time, the original private file page may have been reclaimed.
> If the page cache is not available at this time, a major fault will be
> triggered and the file will be read, causing additional overhead.
>
> Our problem scenario is as follows:
>
> task 1                      task 2
> ------                      ------
> /* scan global variables */
> do_numa_page()
>    spin_lock(vmf->ptl)
>    ptep_modify_prot_start()
>    /* set vmf->pte as null */
>                              /* Access global variables */
>                              handle_pte_fault()
>                                /* no pte lock */
>                                do_pte_missing()
>                                  do_fault()
>                                    do_read_fault()
>    ptep_modify_prot_commit()
>    /* ptep update done */
>    pte_unmap_unlock(vmf->pte, vmf->ptl)
>                                      do_fault_around()
>                                      __do_fault()
>                                        filemap_fault()
>                                          /* page cache is not available
>                                          and a major fault is triggered */
>                                          do_sync_mmap_readahead()
>                                          /* page_not_uptodate and goto
>                                          out_retry. */
>
> Is there any way to avoid such a major fault?
>

This is also true w.r.t change_pte_range() in addition to do_numa_page()
?

-aneesh