Re: collision between ZONE_MOVABLE and memblock allocations

[Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2023 at 09:49:12AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Fri 21-07-23 14:20:09, Mike Rapoport wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 19, 2023 at 04:26:04PM -0600, Ross Zwisler wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jul 19, 2023 at 08:44:34AM +0300, Mike Rapoport wrote:
> > > > 3. Switch memblock to use bottom up allocations. Historically memblock
> > > > allocated memory from the top to avoid corrupting the kernel image and to
> > > > avoid exhausting precious ZONE_DMA. I believe we can use bottom-up
> > > > allocations with lower limit of memblock allocations set to 16M.
> > > > 
> > > > With the hack below no memblock allocations will end up in ZONE_MOVABLE:
> > > 
> > > Yep, I've confirmed that for my use cases at least this does the trick, thank
> > > you!  I had thought about moving the memblock allocations, but had no idea it
> > > was (basically) already supported and thought it'd be much riskier than just
> > > adjusting where ZONE_MOVABLE lived.
> > > 
> > > Is there a reason for this to not be a real option for users, maybe per a
> > > kernel config knob or something?  I'm happy to explore other options in this
> > > thread, but this is doing the trick so far.
> > 
> > I think we can make x86 always use bottom up.
> > 
> > To do this properly we'd need to set lower limit for memblock allocations
> > to MAX_DMA32_PFN and allow fallback below it so that early allocations
> > won't eat memory from ZONE_DMA32.
> > 
> > Aside from x86 boot being fragile in general I don't see why this wouldn't
> > work.
> 
> This would add a very subtle depency of a functionality on the specific
> boot allocator behavior and that is bad for long term maintenance.

What do you mean by "specific boot allocator behavior"?
Using a limit for allocations and then falling back to the entire available
memory if allocation fails within the limits?

> -- 
> Michal Hocko
> SUSE Labs

-- 
Sincerely yours,
Mike.