Re: [PATCH v2] mm: cma: indefinitely retry allocations in cma_alloc

Chris Goldsworthy
2020-09-14T18:33:58Z

On 2020-09-14 02:31, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 11.09.20 21:17, Chris Goldsworthy wrote:
>>
>> So, inside of cma_alloc(), instead of giving up when
>> alloc_contig_range()
>> returns -EBUSY after having scanned a whole CMA-region bitmap, perform
>> retries indefinitely, with sleeps, to give the system an opportunity
>> to
>> unpin any pinned pages.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Chris Goldsworthy <cgoldswo@codeaurora.org>
>> Co-developed-by: Vinayak Menon <vinmenon@codeaurora.org>
>> Signed-off-by: Vinayak Menon <vinmenon@codeaurora.org>
>> ---
>> mm/cma.c | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++--
>> 1 file changed, 23 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/mm/cma.c b/mm/cma.c
>> index 7f415d7..90bb505 100644
>> --- a/mm/cma.c
>> +++ b/mm/cma.c
>> @@ -442,8 +443,28 @@ struct page *cma_alloc(struct cma *cma, size_t
>> count, unsigned int align,
>> bitmap_maxno, start, bitmap_count, mask,
>> offset);
>> if (bitmap_no >= bitmap_maxno) {
>> - mutex_unlock(&cma->lock);
>> - break;
>> + if (ret == -EBUSY) {
>> + mutex_unlock(&cma->lock);
>> +
>> + /*
>> + * Page may be momentarily pinned by some other
>> + * process which has been scheduled out, e.g.
>> + * in exit path, during unmap call, or process
>> + * fork and so cannot be freed there. Sleep
>> + * for 100ms and retry the allocation.
>> + */
>> + start = 0;
>> + ret = -ENOMEM;
>> + msleep(100);
>> + continue;
>> + } else {
>> + /*
>> + * ret == -ENOMEM - all bits in cma->bitmap are
>> + * set, so we break accordingly.
>> + */
>> + mutex_unlock(&cma->lock);
>> + break;
>> + }
>> }
>> bitmap_set(cma->bitmap, bitmap_no, bitmap_count);
>> /*
>>
>
> What about long-term pinnings? IIRC, that can happen easily e.g., with
> vfio (and I remember there is a way via vmsplice).
>
> Not convinced trying forever is a sane approach in the general case ...

Hi David,

I've botched the threading, so there are discussions with respect to the
previous patch-set that is missing on this thread, which I will
summarize below:

V1:
[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/5/1097
[2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/6/1040
[3] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/11/893
[4] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/21/1490
[5] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/9/11/1072

[1] features version of the patch featured a finite number of retries,
which has been stable for our kernels. In [2], Andrew questioned whether
we could actually find a way of solving the problem on the grounds that
doing a finite number of retries doesn't actually fix the problem (more
importantly, in [4] Andrew indicated that he would prefer not to merge
the patch as it doesn't solve the issue). In [3], I suggest one actual
fix for this, which is to use preempt_disable/enable() to prevent
context switches from occurring during the periods in copy_one_pte() and
exit_mmap() (I forgot to mention this case in the commit text) in which
_refcount > _mapcount for a page - you would also need to prevent
interrupts from occurring to if we were to fully prevent the issue from
occurring. I think this would be acceptable for the copy_one_pte()
case, since there _refcount > _mapcount for little time. For the
exit_mmap() case, however, _refcount is greater than _mapcount whilst
the page-tables are being torn down for a process - that could be too
long for disabling preemption / interrupts.

So, in [4], Andrew asks about two alternatives to see if they're viable:
(1) acquiring locks on the exit_mmap path and migration paths, (2)
retrying indefinitely. In [5], I discuss how using locks could increase
the time it takes to perform a CMA allocation, such that a retry
approach would avoid increased CMA allocation times. I'm also uncertain
about how the locking scheme could be implemented effectively without
introducing a new per-page lock that will be used specifically to solve
this issue, and I'm not sure this would be accepted.

We're fine with doing indefinite retries, on the grounds that if there
is some long-term pinning that occurs when alloc_contig_range returns
-EBUSY, that it should be debugged and fixed. Would it be possible to
make this infinite-retrying something that could be enabled or disabled
by a defconfig option?

Thanks,

Chris.

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