Re: [PATCH 2/2] mm/dax: Don't enable huge dax mapping by default

Dan Williams
2019-02-28T16:45:47Z

On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 1:40 AM Oliver <oohall@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 7:35 PM Aneesh Kumar K.V
> <aneesh.kumar@linux.ibm.com> wrote:
> >
> > Add a flag to indicate the ability to do huge page dax mapping. On architecture
> > like ppc64, the hypervisor can disable huge page support in the guest. In
> > such a case, we should not enable huge page dax mapping. This patch adds
> > a flag which the architecture code will update to indicate huge page
> > dax mapping support.
>
> *groan*
>
> > Architectures mostly do transparent_hugepage_flag = 0; if they can't
> > do hugepages. That also takes care of disabling dax hugepage mapping
> > with this change.
> >
> > Without this patch we get the below error with kvm on ppc64.
> >
> > [ 118.849975] lpar: Failed hash pte insert with error -4
> >
> > NOTE: The patch also use
> >
> > echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
> > to disable dax huge page mapping.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Aneesh Kumar K.V <aneesh.kumar@linux.ibm.com>
> > ---
> > TODO:
> > * Add Fixes: tag
> >
> > include/linux/huge_mm.h | 4 +++-
> > mm/huge_memory.c | 4 ++++
> > 2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/include/linux/huge_mm.h b/include/linux/huge_mm.h
> > index 381e872bfde0..01ad5258545e 100644
> > --- a/include/linux/huge_mm.h
> > +++ b/include/linux/huge_mm.h
> > @@ -53,6 +53,7 @@ vm_fault_t vmf_insert_pfn_pud(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long addr,
> > pud_t *pud, pfn_t pfn, bool write);
> > enum transparent_hugepage_flag {
> > TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_FLAG,
> > + TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_DAX_FLAG,
> > TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_REQ_MADV_FLAG,
> > TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_DEFRAG_DIRECT_FLAG,
> > TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_DEFRAG_KSWAPD_FLAG,
> > @@ -111,7 +112,8 @@ static inline bool __transparent_hugepage_enabled(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
> > if (transparent_hugepage_flags & (1 << TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_FLAG))
> > return true;
> >
> > - if (vma_is_dax(vma))
> > + if (vma_is_dax(vma) &&
> > + (transparent_hugepage_flags & (1 << TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_DAX_FLAG)))
> > return true;
>
> Forcing PTE sized faults should be fine for fsdax, but it'll break
> devdax. The devdax driver requires the fault size be >= the namespace
> alignment since devdax tries to guarantee hugepage mappings will be
> used and PMD alignment is the default. We can probably have devdax
> fall back to the largest size the hypervisor has made available, but
> it does run contrary to the design. Ah well, I suppose it's better off
> being degraded rather than unusable.

Given this is an explicit setting I think device-dax should explicitly
fail to enable in the presence of this flag to preserve the
application visible behavior.

I.e. if device-dax was enabled after this setting was made then I
think future faults should fail as well.