Message-ID: <a0d1d889-c711-494b-a85a-33cbde4688ba@redhat.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2025 10:59:20 +0200
From: David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>
To: Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>, Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>
Cc: linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 Keir Fraser <keirf@...gle.com>, Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>,
 John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>, Frederick Mayle <fmayle@...gle.com>,
 Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, Peter Xu <peterx@...hat.com>,
 Rik van Riel <riel@...riel.com>, Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
 Ge Yang <yangge1116@....com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm/gup: Drain batched mlock folio processing before
 attempting migration

On 28.08.25 10:47, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2025, Hugh Dickins wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Aug 2025, Will Deacon wrote:
>>> On Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 02:31:42PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 09:14:48PM -0700, Hugh Dickins wrote:
>>>>> I think replace the folio_test_mlocked(folio) part of it by
>>>>> (folio_test_mlocked(folio) && !folio_test_unevictable(folio)).
>>>>> That should reduce the extra calls to a much more reasonable
>>>>> number, while still solving your issue.
>>>>
>>>> Alas, I fear that the folio may be unevictable by this point (which
>>>> seems to coincide with the readahead fault adding it to the LRU above)
>>>> but I can try it out.
>>>
>>> I gave this a spin but I still see failures with this change.
>>
>> Many thanks, Will, for the precisely relevant traces (in which,
>> by the way, mapcount=0 really means _mapcount=0 hence mapcount=1).
>>
>> Yes, those do indeed illustrate a case which my suggested
>> (folio_test_mlocked(folio) && !folio_test_unevictable(folio))
>> failed to cover.  Very helpful to have an example of that.
>>
>> And many thanks, David, for your reminder of commit 33dfe9204f29
>> ("mm/gup: clear the LRU flag of a page before adding to LRU batch").
>>
>> Yes, I strongly agree with your suggestion that the mlock batch
>> be brought into line with its change to the ordinary LRU batches,
>> and agree that doing so will be likely to solve Will's issue
>> (and similar cases elsewhere, without needing to modify them).
>>
>> Now I just have to cool my head and get back down into those
>> mlock batches.  I am fearful that making a change there to suit
>> this case will turn out later to break another case (and I just
>> won't have time to redevelop as thorough a grasp of the races as
>> I had back then).  But if we're lucky, applying that "one batch
>> at a time" rule will actually make it all more comprehensible.
>>
>> (I so wish we had spare room in struct page to keep the address
>> of that one batch entry, or the CPU to which that one batch
>> belongs: then, although that wouldn't eliminate all uses of
>> lru_add_drain_all(), it would allow us to efficiently extract
>> a target page from its LRU batch without a remote drain.)
>>
>> I have not yet begun to write such a patch, and I'm not yet sure
>> that it's even feasible: this mail sent to get the polite thank
>> yous out of my mind, to help clear it for getting down to work.
> 
> It took several days in search of the least bad compromise, but
> in the end I concluded the opposite of what we'd intended above.
> 
> There is a fundamental incompatibility between my 5.18 2fbb0c10d1e8
> ("mm/munlock: mlock_page() munlock_page() batch by pagevec")
> and Ge Yang's 6.11 33dfe9204f29
> ("mm/gup: clear the LRU flag of a page before adding to LRU batch").
> 
> It turns out that the mm/swap.c folio batches (apart from lru_add)
> are all for best-effort, doesn't matter if it's missed, operations;
> whereas mlock and munlock are more serious.  Probably mlock could
> be (not very satisfactorily) converted, but then munlock?  Because
> of failed folio_test_clear_lru()s, it would be far too likely to
> err on either side, munlocking too soon or too late.
> 
> I've concluded that one or the other has to go.  If we're having
> a beauty contest, there's no doubt that 33dfe9204f29 is much nicer
> than 2fbb0c10d1e8 (which is itself far from perfect).  But functionally,
> I'm afraid that removing the mlock/munlock batching will show up as a
> perceptible regression in realistic workloadsg; and on consideration,
> I've found no real justification for the LRU flag clearing change.

Just to understand what you are saying: are you saying that we will go 
back to having a folio being part of multiple LRU caches? :/ If so, I 
really rally hope that we can find another way and not go back to that 
old handling.

-- 
Cheers

David / dhildenb

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