Re: [PATCH v3 0/5] x86, memblock: Allocate memory near kernel image before SRAT parsed.

[Zhang Yanfei <zhangyanfei@cn.fujitsu.com>]

Hello tejun,

Could you please help reviewing the patchset? As you suggested,
we've make the patchset much simpler and cleaner.

Thanks in advance!

On 09/13/2013 05:30 PM, Tang Chen wrote:
> This patch-set is based on tj's suggestion, and not fully tested. 
> Just for review and discussion. 
> 
> This patch-set is based on the latest kernel (3.11)
> HEAD is:
> commit d5d04bb48f0eb89c14e76779bb46212494de0bec
> Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
> Date:   Wed Sep 11 19:55:12 2013 -0700
> 
> 
> [Problem]
> 
> The current Linux cannot migrate pages used by the kerenl because
> of the kernel direct mapping. In Linux kernel space, va = pa + PAGE_OFFSET.
> When the pa is changed, we cannot simply update the pagetable and
> keep the va unmodified. So the kernel pages are not migratable.
> 
> There are also some other issues will cause the kernel pages not migratable.
> For example, the physical address may be cached somewhere and will be used.
> It is not to update all the caches.
> 
> When doing memory hotplug in Linux, we first migrate all the pages in one
> memory device somewhere else, and then remove the device. But if pages are
> used by the kernel, they are not migratable. As a result, memory used by
> the kernel cannot be hot-removed.
> 
> Modifying the kernel direct mapping mechanism is too difficult to do. And
> it may cause the kernel performance down and unstable. So we use the following
> way to do memory hotplug.
> 
> 
> [What we are doing]
> 
> In Linux, memory in one numa node is divided into several zones. One of the
> zones is ZONE_MOVABLE, which the kernel won't use.
> 
> In order to implement memory hotplug in Linux, we are going to arrange all
> hotpluggable memory in ZONE_MOVABLE so that the kernel won't use these memory.
> To do this, we need ACPI's help.
> 
> In ACPI, SRAT(System Resource Affinity Table) contains NUMA info. The memory
> affinities in SRAT record every memory range in the system, and also, flags
> specifying if the memory range is hotpluggable.
> (Please refer to ACPI spec 5.0 5.2.16)
> 
> With the help of SRAT, we have to do the following two things to achieve our
> goal:
> 
> 1. When doing memory hot-add, allow the users arranging hotpluggable as
>    ZONE_MOVABLE.
>    (This has been done by the MOVABLE_NODE functionality in Linux.)
> 
> 2. when the system is booting, prevent bootmem allocator from allocating
>    hotpluggable memory for the kernel before the memory initialization
>    finishes.
> 
> The problem 2 is the key problem we are going to solve. But before solving it,
> we need some preparation. Please see below.
> 
> 
> [Preparation]
> 
> Bootloader has to load the kernel image into memory. And this memory must be 
> unhotpluggable. We cannot prevent this anyway. So in a memory hotplug system, 
> we can assume any node the kernel resides in is not hotpluggable.
> 
> Before SRAT is parsed, we don't know which memory ranges are hotpluggable. But
> memblock has already started to work. In the current kernel, memblock allocates 
> the following memory before SRAT is parsed:
> 
> setup_arch()
>  |->memblock_x86_fill()            /* memblock is ready */
>  |......
>  |->early_reserve_e820_mpc_new()   /* allocate memory under 1MB */
>  |->reserve_real_mode()            /* allocate memory under 1MB */
>  |->init_mem_mapping()             /* allocate page tables, about 2MB to map 1GB memory */
>  |->dma_contiguous_reserve()       /* specified by user, should be low */
>  |->setup_log_buf()                /* specified by user, several mega bytes */
>  |->relocate_initrd()              /* could be large, but will be freed after boot, should reorder */
>  |->acpi_initrd_override()         /* several mega bytes */
>  |->reserve_crashkernel()          /* could be large, should reorder */
>  |......
>  |->initmem_init()                 /* Parse SRAT */
> 
> According to Tejun's advice, before SRAT is parsed, we should try our best to
> allocate memory near the kernel image. Since the whole node the kernel resides 
> in won't be hotpluggable, and for a modern server, a node may have at least 16GB
> memory, allocating several mega bytes memory around the kernel image won't cross
> to hotpluggable memory.
> 
> 
> [About this patch-set]
> 
> So this patch-set does the following:
> 
> 1. Make memblock be able to allocate memory from low address to high address.
>    1) Keep all the memblock APIs' prototype unmodified.
>    2) When the direction is bottom up, keep the start address greater than the 
>       end of kernel image.
> 
> 2. Improve init_mem_mapping() to support allocate page tables in bottom up direction.
> 
> 3. Introduce "movablenode" boot option to enable and disable this functionality.
> 
> PS: Reordering of relocate_initrd() has not been done yet. acpi_initrd_override() 
>     needs to access initrd with virtual address. So relocate_initrd() must be done 
>     before acpi_initrd_override().
> 
> 
> Change log v2 -> v3:
> 1. According to Toshi's suggestion, move the direction checking logic into memblock.
>    And simply the code more.
> 
> Change log v1 -> v2:
> 1. According to tj's suggestion, implemented a new function memblock_alloc_bottom_up() 
>    to allocate memory from bottom upwards, whihc can simplify the code.
> 
> 
> Tang Chen (5):
>   memblock: Introduce allocation direction to memblock.
>   memblock: Improve memblock to support allocation from lower address.
>   x86, acpi, crash, kdump: Do reserve_crashkernel() after SRAT is
>     parsed.
>   x86, mem-hotplug: Support initialize page tables from low to high.
>   mem-hotplug: Introduce movablenode boot option to control memblock
>     allocation direction.
> 
>  Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt |   15 ++++
>  arch/x86/kernel/setup.c             |   44 ++++++++++++-
>  arch/x86/mm/init.c                  |  121 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
>  include/linux/memblock.h            |   22 ++++++
>  include/linux/memory_hotplug.h      |    5 ++
>  mm/memblock.c                       |  120 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
>  mm/memory_hotplug.c                 |    9 +++
>  7 files changed, 293 insertions(+), 43 deletions(-)
> 
> 


-- 
Thanks.
Zhang Yanfei

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