From: Dave McCracken <dcm@mccr.org>
To: Xen Developers <xen-devel@lists.xen.org>
Cc: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@eu.citrix.com>,
Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@citrix.com>
Subject: Issue with PV superpage handling
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 09:38:21 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <201206250938.21418.dcm@mccr.org> (raw)
Awhile back I added the domain config flag "superpages" to support Linux
hugepages in PV domains. When the flag is set, the PV domain is populated
entirely with superpages. If not enough superpage-sized chunks can be found,
the domain creation fails.
At some time after my patch was accepted, the code I added to domain restore
was removed because I broke page allocation batching. I put it on my TODO
list to reimplement it, then it got lost, for which I apologize.
Now I have gotten back to reimplementing PV superpage support in restore, I
find that recently other code was added to restore that, while triggered by
the superpage flag, only allocates superpages opportunistically and falls back
to small pages if it fails. This breaks the original semantics of the flag
and could cause any OS that depends on the semantics to fail catastrophically.
I have a patch that implements the original semantics of the superpage flag
while preserving the batch allocation behavior. I can remove the competing
code and submit mine, but I have a question. What value is there in
implementing opportunistic allocation of superpages for a PV (or an HVM)
domain in restore? It clearly can't be based on the superpages flag.
Opportunistic superpage allocation is already the default behavior for HVM
domain creation. Should it also be a default on HVM restore? What about for
PV domains? Is there any real benefit?
Thanks,
Dave McCracken
Oracle Corp.
next reply other threads:[~2012-06-25 14:38 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2012-06-25 14:38 Dave McCracken [this message]
2012-06-25 15:08 ` Issue with PV superpage handling George Dunlap
2012-06-25 15:48 ` Jan Beulich
2012-06-25 16:07 ` Dave McCracken
2012-06-25 17:07 ` George Dunlap
2012-06-26 6:52 ` Jan Beulich
2012-07-09 6:02 ` Juergen Gross
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