Message-ID: <20baab84-c8b0-4c46-a550-21b26b975d07@suse.de>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2026 08:31:16 +0100
From: Hannes Reinecke <hare@...e.de>
To: "David Hildenbrand (Red Hat)" <david@...nel.org>,
 Gregory Price <gourry@...rry.net>
Cc: linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, kernel-team@...a.com,
 osalvador@...e.de, gregkh@...uxfoundation.org, rafael@...nel.org,
 dakr@...nel.org, akpm@...ux-foundation.org, lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com,
 Liam.Howlett@...cle.com, vbabka@...e.cz, rppt@...nel.org, surenb@...gle.com,
 mhocko@...e.com
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] memory,memory_hotplug: allow restricting memory
 blocks to zone movable

On 1/6/26 21:22, David Hildenbrand (Red Hat) wrote:
> On 1/6/26 20:59, Gregory Price wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 06, 2026 at 07:38:54PM +0100, David Hildenbrand (Red Hat) 
>> wrote:
>>> On 1/6/26 19:06, Gregory Price wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Jan 06, 2026 at 06:52:11PM +0100, David Hildenbrand (Red 
>>>> Hat) wrote:
>>>>> On 1/6/26 17:58, Gregory Price wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Fair, I'll revist this once Hannes gets a chance to chime in.
>>>>
>>>> This was effective at getting the discussion started though :P
>>>
>>> Hehe, yes.
>>>
>>> Another thing to look into would be to provide a way for ndctl to just
>>> add+online the memory in one shot, without having to go back to walking
>>> memory blocks to online them etc.
>>>
>>
>> I think it's the opposite: offline+remove needing to be done in one step
>> while holding the hotplug lock.  Right now, I think you have to do
>> something like
> 
> That's what I note below, yes.
> 
> For the udev vs. ndctl race to be handled in a
> good way you need add+online be done in one operation.
> 
>>
>> daxctl offline-memory ...
>> daxctl destroy ...
>>
>> You can't destroy and have it offline the memory for you in one go IIRC.
> 
> As noted below, we have offline_and_remove_memory().
> 
> I added the comment:
> 
> /*
>   * Try to offline and remove memory. Might take a long time to finish 
> in case
>   * memory is still in use. Primarily useful for memory devices that 
> logically
>   * unplugged all memory (so it's no longer in use) and want to offline 
> + remove
>   * that memory.
>   */
> 
> Nothing speaks against letting dax use that, but the tricky part is that
> offlining might take forever, so one has to be prepared to handle that
> (and letting user space cancel the operation).
> 
> And for dax devices that consist of multiple ranges, it can be "fun" having
> some regions removed and others not.
> 
> Something to think about :)
> 
We had this discussion at LPC. The current interface of having to 
individually offline every single memory block is not very 
user-friendly. While it provides the best possible granularity, it
really only makes sense for virtual environments where you _can_
hotplug individual blocks.
For hardware-based scenarios memory will always be removed in
larger entities (eg the CXL device), and it's always an 'all-or-nothing'
scenario; you cannot remove individual memory blocks on a CXL device.
So there the memory block abstraction makes less sense, and it
would be good to have a single 'knob' to remove the entire CXL
device and all memory blocks on it.
Sure, it might take some time, but one doesn't need to worry about
restoring the original state if the operation on one block fails.

Cheers,

Hannes
-- 
Dr. Hannes Reinecke                  Kernel Storage Architect
hare@...e.de                                +49 911 74053 688
SUSE Software Solutions GmbH, Frankenstr. 146, 90461 Nürnberg
HRB 36809 (AG Nürnberg), GF: I. Totev, A. McDonald, W. Knoblich

Powered by blists - more mailing lists