Re: [RFC PATCH 10/12] mm: add the buddy system interface

[Kamezawa Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>]

On 2015/06/16 2:20, Luck, Tony wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 05:47:27PM +0900, Kamezawa Hiroyuki wrote:
>> So, there are 3 ideas.
>>
>>   (1) kernel only from MIRROR / user only from MOVABLE (Tony)
>>   (2) kernel only from MIRROR / user from MOVABLE + MIRROR(ASAP)  (AKPM suggested)
>>       This makes use of the fact MOVABLE memory is reclaimable but Tony pointed out
>>       the memory reclaim can be critical for GFP_ATOMIC.
>>   (3) kernel only from MIRROR / user from MOVABLE, special user from MIRROR (Xishi)
>>
>> 2 Implementation ideas.
>>    - creating ZONE
>>    - creating new alloation attribute
>>
>> I don't convince whether we need some new structure in mm. Isn't it good to use
>> ZONE_MOVABLE for not-mirrored memory ?
>> Then, disable fallback from ZONE_MOVABLE -> ZONE_NORMAL for (1) and (3)
>
> We might need to rename it ... right now the memory hotplug
> people use ZONE_MOVABLE to indicate regions of physical memory
> that can be removed from the system.  I'm wondering whether
> people will want systems that have both removable and mirrored
> areas?  Then we have four attribute combinations:
>
> mirror=no  removable=no  - prefer to use for user, could use for kernel if we run out of mirror
> mirror=no  removable=yes - can only be used for user (kernel allocation makes it not-removable)
> mirror=yes removable=no  - use for kernel, possibly for special users if we define some interface
> mirror=yes removable=yes - must not use for kernel ... would have to give to user ... seems like a bad idea to configure a system this way
>

Thank you for clarification. I see "mirror=no, removable=no" case may require a new name.

IMHO, the value of Address-Based-Memory-Mirror is that users can protect their system's
important functions without using full-memory mirror. So, I feel thinking
"mirror=no, removable=no" just makes our discussion/implemenation complex without real
user value.

Shouldn't we start with just thiking 2 cases of
  mirror=no  removable=yes
  mirror=yes removable=no
?

And then, if the naming is problem, alias name can be added.

Thanks,
-Kame






--
To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in
the body to majordomo@kvack.org.  For more info on Linux MM,
see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ .
Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@kvack.org"> email@kvack.org </a>