linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3] kpageflags: respect folio head-page flag placement

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Message-ID: <c2df31dc-185f-4bd1-9e58-b32e024241c3@memverge.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2024 12:08:01 -0700
From: Svetly Todorov <svetly.todorov@...verge.com>
To: Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
Cc: linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 gregory.price@...verge.com, wangkefeng.wang@...wei.com,
 akpm@...ux-foundation.org, david@...hat.com, vbabka@...e.cz,
 naoya.horiguchi@...ux.dev
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] kpageflags: respect folio head-page flag placement

> Thanks for your careful review.
No problem!! It's a valuable learning experience for me.

>>> -	if (PageKsm(page))
>>> +	if (mapping & PAGE_MAPPING_KSM)
>>>    		u |= 1 << KPF_KSM;
>> This might need an #ifdef?
>> Say mapping is movable and anon -- then (mapping & PAGE_MAPPING_KSM) is
>> true. Before, we called PageKsm, which falls through to a PG_ksm check.
>> If !CONFIG_KSM then that flag is always false. But now, we're liable to
>> report KPF_KSM even if !CONFIG_KSM.
> 
> I'm not sure where you see a PG_ksm check:
> 
> static __always_inline bool folio_test_ksm(const struct folio *folio)
> {
>          return ((unsigned long)folio->mapping & PAGE_MAPPING_FLAGS) ==
>                                  PAGE_MAPPING_KSM;
> }
> 
> static __always_inline bool PageKsm(const struct page *page)
> {
>          return folio_test_ksm(page_folio(page));
> }
My bad. What I meant was, if CONFIG_KSM is undefined, then

 > #ifdef CONFIG_KSM
 > ...
 > static __always_inline bool PageKsm(struct page *page)
 > {
 > 	return folio_test_ksm(page_folio(page));
 > }

will fall through to

 > # else
 > TESTPAGEFLAG_FALSE(Ksm, ksm)
 > #endif

And you're right -- there is no PG_ksm comparison --
but the autogenerated PageKsm will always return false:

 > #define TESTPAGEFLAG_FALSE(uname, lname) \
 > ...
 > static inline int Page##uname(const struct page *page)
 > {
 > 	return 0;
 > }

But given your comments below, I'm realizing this isn't as important
as I thought it was.

> There's no such thing as a movable anon page -- the two bits in the
> bottom of the mapping pointer mean:
> 
> 00	file (or NULL)
> 01	anon
> 10	movable
> 11	KSM
> 
> Perhaps it might be clearer to say that anon pages are inherently
> movable; the movable type really means that the reset of the mapping
> pointer refers to a movable_operations instead of a mapping or anon_vma.
I see. I misunderstood how the flags are applied.
I thought that 11 == (01 | 10) -- i.e. that KSM was an intersection of
MOVABLE and ANON. But they're more like mutually-exclusive states. And
I doubt that a page will end up in the KSM "state" if CONFIG_KSM is
disabled. So we don't need to rely on PageKsm() for the CONFIG_KSM
check.

That said, won't

	if (mapping & PAGE_MAPPING_KSM)

return true even if a mapping is ANON (01) or MOVABLE (10)
but not KSM (11)? Shouldn't this at least be

	if (mapping & PAGE_MAPPING_KSM == PAGE_MAPPING_KSM)

?

>>>    	/*
>>>    	 * compound pages: export both head/tail info
>>>    	 * they together define a compound page's start/end pos and order
>>>    	 */
>>> -	if (PageHead(page))
>>> -		u |= 1 << KPF_COMPOUND_HEAD;
>>> -	if (PageTail(page))
>>> +	if (page == &folio->page)
>>> +		u |= kpf_copy_bit(k, KPF_COMPOUND_HEAD, PG_head);
>>> +	else
>>>    		u |= 1 << KPF_COMPOUND_TAIL;
>> This makes sense but it'd require changes to the documentation.
>> I ran a python3 memhog to see if anonymous pages are currently reported
>> as COMPOUND_HEAD or COMPOUND_TAIL and it seems to be a no on both.
>> But with this, I think every pfn will have one of the two set.
>> Unless you can have a page outside of a folio -- not sure.
> 
> I see your confusion.  We have three cases; head, tail and neither
> (obviously a page is never both head & tail).  If a page is neither,
> it's order-0 and it is the only page in the folio.  So we handle head
> or neither in the first leg of the 'if' where we set KPF_COMPOUND_HEAD
> if PG_head is set, and tail in the 'else' leg.

Dumb mistake on my part. For some reason, I thought that every
folio->page had its PG_head set.

> It's not so much the performance as it is the atomicity.  I'm doing my
> best to get an atomic snapshot of the flags and report a consistent
> state, even if it might be stale by the time the user sees it.
I see. That makes sense.

Cool! Thanks for bearing with me. Beyond the KSM stuff, my only
hangup is that this patch doesn't account for the handful of
remaining per-page flags (KPF_HWPOISON, KPF_ARCH_*). Should I
take this diff, tack those on in a second commit, and then put
up a v4? Forgive me, I'm very green to the kernel dev process...