Re: [PATCH v12 mm-new 06/15] khugepaged: introduce collapse_max_ptes_none helper function

Nico Pache
2025-10-29T20:46:11Z

On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 9:04 AM David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> >>
> >> No creep, because you'll always collapse.
> >
> > OK so in the 511 scenario, do we simply immediately collapse to the largest
> > possible _mTHP_ page size if based on adjacent none/zero page entries in the
> > PTE, and _never_ collapse to PMD on this basis even if we do have sufficient
> > none/zero PTE entries to do so?
>
> Right. And if we fail to allocate a PMD, we would collapse to smaller
> sizes, and later, once a PMD is possible, collapse to a PMD.
>
> But there is no creep, as we would have collapsed a PMD right from the
> start either way.
>
> >
> > And only collapse to PMD size if we have sufficient adjacent PTE entries that
> > are populated?
> >
> > Let's really nail this down actually so we can be super clear what the issue is
> > here.
> >
>
> I hope what I wrote above made sense.
>
> >
> >>
> >> Creep only happens if you wouldn't collapse a PMD without prior mTHP
> >> collapse, but suddenly would in the same scenario simply because you had
> >> prior mTHP collapse.
> >>
> >> At least that's my understanding.
> >
> > OK, that makes sense, is the logic (this may be part of the bit I haven't
> > reviewed yet tbh) then that for khugepaged mTHP we have the system where we
> > always require prior mTHP collapse _first_?
>
> So I would describe creep as
>
> "we would not collapse a PMD THP because max_ptes_none is violated, but
> because we collapsed smaller mTHP THPs before, we essentially suddenly
> have more PTEs that are not none-or-zero, making us suddenly collapse a
> PMD THP at the same place".
>
> Assume the following: max_ptes_none = 256
>
> This means we would only collapse if at most half (256/512) of the PTEs
> are none-or-zero.
>
> But imagine the (simplified) PTE layout with PMD = 8 entries to simplify:
>
> [ P Z P Z P Z Z Z ]
>
> 3 Present vs. 5 Zero -> do not collapse a PMD (8)
>
> But sssume we collapse smaller mTHP (2 entries) first
>
> [ P P P P P P Z Z ]
>
> We collapsed 3x "P Z" into "P P" because the ratio allowed for it.
>
> Suddenly we have
>
> 6 Present vs 2 Zero and we collapse a PMD (8)
>
> [ P P P P P P P P ]
>
> That's the "creep" problem.

I'd like to add a little to this,

The worst case scenario is all mTHP sizes enabled and a value of 256.
A 16kb collapse would then lead all the way up to a PMD collapse,
stopping to collapse at each mTHP level on each subsequent scan of the
same PMD range. The larger the max_pte_none value is, the less "stops"
it will make before reaching a PMD size, but it will ultimately creep
up to a PMD. Hence the cap. At 511, a single pte in a range will
always satisfy the PMD collapse, so we will never attempt any other
orders (other than in the case of the collapse failing, which David
explains above).

Hopefully that helps give some more insight to the creep problem.

Cheers
-- Nico

>
> >
> >>
> >>>
> >>>> max_ptes_none == 0 -> collapse mTHP only if all non-none/zero
> >>>>
> >>>> And for the intermediate values
> >>>>
> >>>> (1) pr_warn() when mTHPs are enabled, stating that mTHP collapse is not
> >>>> supported yet with other values
> >>>
> >>> It feels a bit much to issue a kernel warning every time somebody twiddles that
> >>> value, and it's kind of against user expectation a bit.
> >>
> >> pr_warn_once() is what I meant.
> >
> > Right, but even then it feels a bit extreme, warnings are pretty serious
> > things. Then again there's precedent for this, and it may be the least worse
> > solution.
> >
> > I just picture a cloud provider turning this on with mTHP then getting their
> > monitoring team reporting some urgent communication about warnings in dmesg :)
>
> I mean, one could make the states mutually, maybe?
>
> Disallow enabling mTHP with max_ptes_none set to unsupported values and
> the other way around.
>
> That would probably be cleanest, although the implementation might get a
> bit more involved (but it's solvable).
>
> But the concern could be that there are configs that could suddenly
> break: someone that set max_ptes_none and enabled mTHP.
>
>
> I'll note that we could also consider only supporting "max_ptes_none =
> 511" (default) to start with.
>
> The nice thing about that value is that it us fully supported with the
> underused shrinker, because max_ptes_none=511 -> never shrink.
>
> --
> Cheers
>
> David / dhildenb
>