On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 04:03:18PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 31.03.20 15:37, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 03:32:05PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> >> On 31.03.20 15:24, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 12:35:24PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> >>>> On 26.03.20 10:49, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> >>>>> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 08:54:04AM +0100, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Am 26.03.2020 um 08:21 schrieb Michael S. Tsirkin <m...@redhat.com>:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 09:51:25AM +0100, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> On 12.03.20 09:47, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 09:37:32AM +0100, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>> 2. You are essentially stealing THPs in the guest. So the fastest
> >>>>>>>>>> mapping (THP in guest and host) is gone. The guest won't be able
> >>>>>>>>>> to make
> >>>>>>>>>> use of THP where it previously was able to. I can imagine this
> >>>>>>>>>> implies a
> >>>>>>>>>> performance degradation for some workloads. This needs a proper
> >>>>>>>>>> performance evaluation.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> I think the problem is more with the alloc_pages API.
> >>>>>>>>> That gives you exactly the given order, and if there's
> >>>>>>>>> a larger chunk available, it will split it up.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> But for balloon - I suspect lots of other users,
> >>>>>>>>> we do not want to stress the system but if a large
> >>>>>>>>> chunk is available anyway, then we could handle
> >>>>>>>>> that more optimally by getting it all in one go.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> So if we want to address this, IMHO this calls for a new API.
> >>>>>>>>> Along the lines of
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> struct page *alloc_page_range(gfp_t gfp, unsigned int min_order,
> >>>>>>>>> unsigned int max_order, unsigned int *order)
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> the idea would then be to return at a number of pages in the given
> >>>>>>>>> range.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> What do you think? Want to try implementing that?
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> You can just start with the highest order and decrement the order
> >>>>>>>> until
> >>>>>>>> your allocation succeeds using alloc_pages(), which would be enough
> >>>>>>>> for
> >>>>>>>> a first version. At least I don't see the immediate need for a new
> >>>>>>>> kernel API.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> OK I remember now. The problem is with reclaim. Unless reclaim is
> >>>>>>> completely disabled, any of these calls can sleep. After it wakes up,
> >>>>>>> we would like to get the larger order that has become available
> >>>>>>> meanwhile.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Yes, but that‘s a pure optimization IMHO.
> >>>>>> So I think we should do a trivial implementation first and then see
> >>>>>> what we gain from a new allocator API. Then we might also be able to
> >>>>>> justify it using real numbers.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Well how do you propose implement the necessary semantics?
> >>>>> I think we are both agreed that alloc_page_range is more or
> >>>>> less what's necessary anyway - so how would you approximate it
> >>>>> on top of existing APIs?
> >>>> diff --git a/include/linux/balloon_compaction.h
> >>>> b/include/linux/balloon_compaction.h
> >
> > .....
> >
> >
> >>>> diff --git a/mm/balloon_compaction.c b/mm/balloon_compaction.c
> >>>> index 26de020aae7b..067810b32813 100644
> >>>> --- a/mm/balloon_compaction.c
> >>>> +++ b/mm/balloon_compaction.c
> >>>> @@ -112,23 +112,35 @@ size_t balloon_page_list_dequeue(struct
> >>>> balloon_dev_info *b_dev_info,
> >>>> EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(balloon_page_list_dequeue);
> >>>>
> >>>> /*
> >>>> - * balloon_page_alloc - allocates a new page for insertion into the
> >>>> balloon
> >>>> - * page list.
> >>>> + * balloon_pages_alloc - allocates a new page (of at most the given
> >>>> order)
> >>>> + * for insertion into the balloon page list.
> >>>> *
> >>>> * Driver must call this function to properly allocate a new balloon
> >>>> page.
> >>>> * Driver must call balloon_page_enqueue before definitively removing
> >>>> the page
> >>>> * from the guest system.
> >>>> *
> >>>> + * Will fall back to smaller orders if allocation fails. The order of
> >>>> the
> >>>> + * allocated page is stored in page->private.
> >>>> + *
> >>>> * Return: struct page for the allocated page or NULL on allocation
> >>>> failure.
> >>>> */
> >>>> -struct page *balloon_page_alloc(void)
> >>>> +struct page *balloon_pages_alloc(int order)
> >>>> {
> >>>> - struct page *page = alloc_page(balloon_mapping_gfp_mask() |
> >>>> - __GFP_NOMEMALLOC | __GFP_NORETRY
> >>>> |
> >>>> - __GFP_NOWARN);
> >>>> - return page;
> >>>> + struct page *page;
> >>>> +
> >>>> + while (order >= 0) {
> >>>> + page = alloc_pages(balloon_mapping_gfp_mask() |
> >>>> + __GFP_NOMEMALLOC | __GFP_NORETRY |
> >>>> + __GFP_NOWARN, order);
> >>>> + if (page) {
> >>>> + set_page_private(page, order);
> >>>> + return page;
> >>>> + }
> >>>> + order--;
> >>>> + }
> >>>> + return NULL;
> >>>> }
> >>>> -EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(balloon_page_alloc);
> >>>> +EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(balloon_pages_alloc);
> >>>>
> >>>> /*
> >>>> * balloon_page_enqueue - inserts a new page into the balloon page list.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> I think this will try to invoke direct reclaim from the first iteration
> >>> to free up the max order.
> >>
> >> %__GFP_NORETRY: The VM implementation will try only very lightweight
> >> memory direct reclaim to get some memory under memory pressure (thus it
> >> can sleep). It will avoid disruptive actions like OOM killer.
> >>
> >> Certainly good enough for a first version I would say, no?
> >
> > Frankly how well that behaves would depend a lot on the workload.
> > Can regress just as well.
> >
> > For the 1st version I'd prefer something that is the least disruptive,
> > and that IMHO means we only trigger reclaim at all in the same configuration
> > as now - when we can't satisfy the lowest order allocation.
>
> Agreed.
>
> >
> > Anything else would be a huge amount of testing with all kind of
> > workloads.
> >
>
> So doing a "& ~__GFP_RECLAIM" in case order > 0? (as done in
> GFP_TRANSHUGE_LIGHT)
That will improve the situation when reclaim is not needed, but leave
the problem in place for when it's needed: if reclaim does trigger, we
can get a huge free page and immediately break it up.
So it's ok as a first step but it will make the second step harder as
we'll need to test with reclaim :).
> --
> Thanks,
>
> David / dhildenb
