Re: [PATCH 2/3] slab: create barns for online memoryless nodes

Vlastimil Babka (SUSE)
2026-03-19T12:25:03Z

On 3/19/26 12:27, Hao Li wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 19, 2026 at 10:56:09AM +0100, Vlastimil Babka (SUSE) wrote:
>> >
>> > Exactly, conceptually, N_NORMAL_MEMORY seems more precise than N_MEMORY. I took
>> > a quick look through the code, though, and it seems that N_NORMAL_MEMORY hasn't
>> > been fully handled in the hotplug code.
>>
>> Huh you're right, the hotplug code doesn't seem to set it. How much code
>> that we have is broken by that?
>
> This probably needs a bit more digging.
>
>> It seems hotplug doesn't handle it since 2007 in commit 37b07e4163f7
>> ("memoryless nodes: fixup uses of node_online_map in generic code"),
>> although the initial support in 7ea1530ab3fd ("Memoryless nodes: introduce
>> mask of nodes with memory") did set it from hotplug.
>
> Yes, this really is quite an old issue. It looks like we may need to dig
> through the git history a bit more carefully.
>
> I'd be happy to dig into it further.

Great!

>
>>
>> > Given that, I think it makes sense to use N_MEMORY for now, and then switch to
>> > N_NORMAL_MEMORY later once the handling there is improved.
>>
>> So I'll do this:
>>
>> diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
>> index 01ab90bb4622..fb2c5c57bc4e 100644
>> --- a/mm/slub.c
>> +++ b/mm/slub.c
>> @@ -6029,7 +6029,7 @@ static __always_inline bool can_free_to_pcs(struct
>> slab *slab)
>> * point to the closest node as we would on a proper memoryless node
>> * setup.
>> */
>> - if (unlikely(!node_isset(numa_node, slab_nodes)))
>> + if (unlikely(!node_state(numa_node, N_MEMORY)))
>
> Looks good to me.
>
> I've gone through the full series, including the range-diff updates, and the
> rest looks good to me.
> Feel free to add my rb-tag to three updated patches. Thanks!
>
> Reviewed-by: Hao Li <hao.li@linux.dev>

Thanks, updated in slab/for-next

>
>> goto check_pfmemalloc;
>> #endif
>>
>>
>> >>
>> >> I don't know if with CONFIG_HAVE_MEMORYLESS_NODES it's possible that
>> >> numa_mem_id() (the closest node with memory) would be ZONE_MOVABLE only.
>> >> Maybe let's hope not, and not adjust that part?
>> >>
>> >
>> > I think that, in the CONFIG_HAVE_MEMORYLESS_NODES=y case, numa_mem_id() ends up
>> > calling local_memory_node(), and the NUMA node it returns should be one that
>> > can allocate slab memory. So the slab_node == numa_node check seems reasonable
>> > to me.
>> >
>> > So it seems that the issue being discussed here may only be specific to the
>> > CONFIG_HAVE_MEMORYLESS_NODES=n case.
>>
>> Great. Thanks!
>>