[PATCH v3] mm, hugetlb: implement movable_gigantic_pages sysctl

Gregory Price
2025-12-03T06:38:40Z

This reintroduces a concept removed by:
commit d6cb41cc44c6 ("mm, hugetlb: remove hugepages_treat_as_movable sysctl")

This sysctl provides flexibility between ZONE_MOVABLE use cases:
1) onlining memory in ZONE_MOVABLE to maintain hotplug compatibility
2) onlining memory in ZONE_MOVABLE to make hugepage allocate reliable

When ZONE_MOVABLE is used to make huge page allocation more reliable,
disallowing gigantic pages memory in this region is pointless. If
hotplug is not a requirement, we can loosen the restrictions to allow
1GB gigantic pages in ZONE_MOVABLE.

Since 1GB can be difficult to migrate / has impacts on compaction /
defragmentation, we don't enable this by default. Notably, 1GB pages
can only be migrated if another 1GB page is available - so hot-unplug
will fail if such a page cannot be found.

However, since there are scenarios where gigantic pages are migratable,
we should allow use of these on movable regions.

Note: Boot-time CMA is not possible for driver-managed hotplug memory,
as CMA requires the memory to be registered as SystemRAM at boot time.
Additionally, 1GB huge pages are not supported by THP.

Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Alexandru Moise <00moses.alexander00@gmail.com>
Suggested-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Gregory Price <gourry@gourry.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20180201193132.Hk7vI_xaU%25akpm@linux-foundation.org/
---
Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst | 14 ++++++++++++--
Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst | 17 +++++++++++++++++
include/linux/hugetlb.h | 3 ++-
mm/hugetlb.c | 1 -
mm/hugetlb_sysctl.c | 9 +++++++++
5 files changed, 40 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst
index 33c886f3d198..6581558fd0d7 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst
@@ -612,8 +612,9 @@ ZONE_MOVABLE, especially when fine-tuning zone ratios:
allocations and silently create a zone imbalance, usually triggered by
inflation requests from the hypervisor.

-- Gigantic pages are unmovable, resulting in user space consuming a
- lot of unmovable memory.
+- Gigantic pages are unmovable when an architecture does not support
+ huge page migration and/or the ``movable_gigantic_pages`` sysctl is false.
+ See Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst for more info on this sysctl.

- Huge pages are unmovable when an architectures does not support huge
page migration, resulting in a similar issue as with gigantic pages.
@@ -672,6 +673,15 @@ block might fail:
- Concurrent activity that operates on the same physical memory area, such as
allocating gigantic pages, can result in temporary offlining failures.

+- When an admin sets the ``movable_gigantic_pages`` sysctl to true, gigantic
+ pages are allowed in ZONE_MOVABLE. This only allows migratable gigantic
+ pages to be allocated; however, if there are no eligible destination gigantic
+ pages at offline, the offlining operation will fail.
+
+ Users leveraging ``movable_gigantic_pages`` should weigh the value of
+ ZONE_MOVABLE for increasing the reliability of gigantic page allocation
+ against the potential loss of hot-unplug reliability.
+
- Out of memory when dissolving huge pages, especially when HugeTLB Vmemmap
Optimization (HVO) is enabled.

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
index 4d71211fdad8..36a390c0561e 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
@@ -54,6 +54,7 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
- mmap_min_addr
- mmap_rnd_bits
- mmap_rnd_compat_bits
+- movable_gigantic_pages
- nr_hugepages
- nr_hugepages_mempolicy
- nr_overcommit_hugepages
@@ -624,6 +625,22 @@ This value can be changed after boot using the
/proc/sys/vm/mmap_rnd_compat_bits tunable

+movable_gigantic_pages
+======================
+
+This parameter controls whether gigantic pages may be allocated from
+ZONE_MOVABLE. If set to non-zero, gigantic pages can be allocated
+from ZONE_MOVABLE. ZONE_MOVABLE memory may be created via the kernel
+boot parameter `kernelcore` or via memory hotplug as discussed in
+Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst.
+
+Support may depend on specific architecture.
+
+Note that using ZONE_MOVABLE gigantic pages may make features like
+memory hotremove more unreliable, as migrating gigantic pages is more
+difficult due to needing larger amounts of physically contiguous memory.
+
+
nr_hugepages
============

diff --git a/include/linux/hugetlb.h b/include/linux/hugetlb.h
index 019a1c5281e4..5c190b22108e 100644
--- a/include/linux/hugetlb.h
+++ b/include/linux/hugetlb.h
@@ -171,6 +171,7 @@ bool hugetlbfs_pagecache_present(struct hstate *h,

struct address_space *hugetlb_folio_mapping_lock_write(struct folio *folio);

+extern int movable_gigantic_pages __read_mostly;
extern int sysctl_hugetlb_shm_group __read_mostly;
extern struct list_head huge_boot_pages[MAX_NUMNODES];

@@ -924,7 +925,7 @@ static inline bool hugepage_movable_supported(struct hstate *h)
if (!hugepage_migration_supported(h))
return false;

- if (hstate_is_gigantic(h))
+ if (hstate_is_gigantic(h) && !movable_gigantic_pages)
return false;
return true;
}
diff --git a/mm/hugetlb.c b/mm/hugetlb.c
index 9e7815b4f058..084d45d5311d 100644
--- a/mm/hugetlb.c
+++ b/mm/hugetlb.c
@@ -49,7 +49,6 @@
#include "internal.h"
#include "hugetlb_vmemmap.h"
#include "hugetlb_cma.h"
-#include "hugetlb_internal.h"
#include <linux/page-isolation.h>

int hugetlb_max_hstate __read_mostly;
diff --git a/mm/hugetlb_sysctl.c b/mm/hugetlb_sysctl.c
index bd3077150542..22a9e15e534f 100644
--- a/mm/hugetlb_sysctl.c
+++ b/mm/hugetlb_sysctl.c
@@ -125,6 +125,15 @@ static const struct ctl_table hugetlb_table[] = {
.mode = 0644,
.proc_handler = hugetlb_overcommit_handler,
},
+#ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_ENABLE_HUGEPAGE_MIGRATION
+ {
+ .procname = "movable_gigantic_pages",
+ .data = &movable_gigantic_pages,
+ .maxlen = sizeof(int),
+ .mode = 0644,
+ .proc_handler = proc_dointvec,
+ },
+#endif
};

void __init hugetlb_sysctl_init(void)
--
2.52.0