Re: [PATCH RFC 02/15] migration: Allow pss->page jump over clean pages

["Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <dgilbert@redhat.com>]

* Peter Xu (peterx@redhat.com) wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 01:42:47PM +0000, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> > * Peter Xu (peterx@redhat.com) wrote:
> > > Commit ba1b7c812c ("migration/ram: Optimize ram_save_host_page()") managed to
> > > optimize host huge page use case by scanning the dirty bitmap when looking for
> > > the next dirty small page to migrate.
> > > 
> > > However when updating the pss->page before returning from that function, we
> > > used MIN() of these two values: (1) next dirty bit, or (2) end of current sent
> > > huge page, to fix up pss->page.
> > > 
> > > That sounds unnecessary, because I see nowhere that requires pss->page to be
> > > not going over current huge page boundary.
> > > 
> > > What we need here is probably MAX() instead of MIN() so that we'll start
> > > scanning from the next dirty bit next time. Since pss->page can't be smaller
> > > than hostpage_boundary (the loop guarantees it), it probably means we don't
> > > need to fix it up at all.
> > > 
> > > Cc: Keqian Zhu <zhukeqian1@huawei.com>
> > > Cc: Kunkun Jiang <jiangkunkun@huawei.com>
> > > Signed-off-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
> > 
> > 
> > Hmm, I think that's potentially necessary.  note that the start of
> > ram_save_host_page stores the 'start_page' at entry.
> > That' start_page' goes to the ram_save_release_protection and so
> > I think it needs to be pagesize aligned for the mmap/uffd that happens.
> 
> Right, that's indeed a functional change, but IMHO it's also fine.
> 
> When reaching ram_save_release_protection(), what we guaranteed is that below
> page range contains no dirty bits in ramblock dirty bitmap:
> 
>   range0 = [start_page, pss->page)
> 
> Side note: inclusive on start, but not inclusive on the end side of range0
> (that is, pss->page can be pointing to a dirty page).
> 
> What ram_save_release_protection() does is to unprotect the pages and let them
> run free.  If we're sure range0 contains no dirty page, it means we have
> already copied them over into the snapshot, so IIUC it's safe to unprotect all
> of it (even if it's already bigger than the host page size)?

I think what's worrying me is the alignment of the address going into
UFFDIO_WRITEPROTECT in uffd_change_protection - if it was previously
huge page aligned and now isn't, what breaks? (Did it support
hugepages?)

> That can be slightly less efficient for live snapshot in some extreme cases
> (when unprotect, we'll need to walk the pgtables in the uffd ioctl()), but I
> don't assume live snapshot to be run on a huge VM, so hopefully it's still
> fine?  Not to mention it should make live migration a little bit faster,
> assuming that's more frequently used..

Hmm I don't think I understand that statement.

Dave

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- 
> Peter Xu
> 
-- 
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / dgilbert@redhat.com / Manchester, UK