Re: [PATCH] mm/hugetlb: fix overbroad MMU notifiers for unshared PMDs

["David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@kernel.org>]

On 9/1/26 02:32, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Aug 2026 17:10:23 +0800 "Li Zhe" <lizhe.67@bytedance.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hugetlb currently expands MMU notifier ranges to PUD boundaries whenever
>> PMD sharing is possible. That is only needed when huge_pmd_unshare()
>> actually detaches a shared PMD page table, because clearing the PUD
>> invalidates the whole PUD-sized virtual address range.
>>
>> For hugetlbfs hole punch and MADV_DONTNEED, a shared mapping can pass
>> the "PMD sharing is possible" range test in function
>> adjust_range_if_pmd_sharing_possible() even when the PMD table covering
>> the target 2M page is not shared. KVM then receives a 1G invalidation for
>> a 2M operation and zaps unrelated secondary mappings, so the guest has to
>> fault them back in.
>>
>> Fix this by using the existing cheap "sharing possible" test only as a
>> gate, then inspect the candidate PMD tables under the locks held by the
>> hugetlb unmap paths. The notifier is expanded only for PUDs whose PMD
>> table is actually shared, while the other callers keep the existing
>> conservative expansion.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
>> On a Redis-in-VM workload that punches cold 2M hugetlb pages, this
>> patch improves P99 QPS stability while punching pages, reducing the QPS
>> degradation ratio from 7.09% to 1.45%.
> 
> So a modest performance improvement?

Is that worth the complexity, though?

-- 
Cheers,

David