Re: [PATCH 0/2] mm: hotplug: implement non-movable version of get_user_pages() to kill long-time pin pages

[Lin Feng <linfeng@cn.fujitsu.com>]

Hi Minchan,

On 02/05/2013 08:58 AM, Minchan Kim wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 06:04:06PM +0800, Lin Feng wrote:
>> Currently get_user_pages() always tries to allocate pages from movable zone,
>> as discussed in thread https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/11/29/69, in some case users
>> of get_user_pages() is easy to pin user pages for a long time(for now we found
>> that pages pinned as aio ring pages is such case), which is fatal for memory
>> hotplug/remove framework.
>>
>> So the 1st patch introduces a new library function called
>> get_user_pages_non_movable() to pin pages only from zone non-movable in memory.
>> It's a wrapper of get_user_pages() but it makes sure that all pages come from
>> non-movable zone via additional page migration.
>>
>> The 2nd patch gets around the aio ring pages can't be migrated bug caused by
>> get_user_pages() via using the new function. It only works when configed with
>> CONFIG_MEMORY_HOTREMOVE, otherwise it uses the old version of get_user_pages().
> 
> CMA has same issue but the problem is the driver developers or any subsystem
> using GUP can't know their pages is in CMA area or not in advance.
> So all of client of GUP should use GUP_NM to work them with CMA/MEMORY_HOTPLUG well?
> Even some driver module in embedded side doesn't open their source code.
Yes, it somehow depends on the users of GUP. In MEMORY_HOTPLUG case, as for most users
of GUP, they will release the pinned pages immediately and to such users they should get
a good performance, using the old style interface is a smart way. And we had better just
deal with the cases we have to by using the new interface.
  
> 
> I would like to make GUP smart so it allocates a page from non-movable/non-cma area
> when memory-hotplug/cma is enabled(CONFIG_MIGRATE_ISOLATE). Yeb. it might hurt GUP
> performance but it is just trade-off for using CMA/memory-hotplug, IMHO. :(
As I debuged the get_user_pages(), I found that some pages is already there and may be
allocated before we call get_user_pages(). __get_user_pages() have following logic to
handle such case.
1786                         while (!(page = follow_page(vma, start, foll_flags))) {
1787                                 int ret;
To such case an additional alloc-flag or such doesn't work, it's difficult to keep GUP
as smart as we want :( , so I worked out the migration approach to get around and 
avoid messing up the current code :)

thanks,
linfeng 

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