Re: [PATCH 1/4] mm: migrate: use a folio in add_page_for_migration()

From: Kefeng Wang
Date: Tue Aug 15 2023 - 20:51:08 EST




On 2023/8/16 5:12, Mike Kravetz wrote:
On 08/15/23 11:58, Huang, Ying wrote:
Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On 08/10/23 09:49, Kefeng Wang wrote:


On 2023/8/10 6:44, Mike Kravetz wrote:
On 08/09/23 13:53, Mike Kravetz wrote:
On 08/09/23 20:37, Kefeng Wang wrote:

Cc Mike to help us clarify the expected behavior of hugetlb.

Hi Mike, what is the expected behavior, if a user tries to use move_pages()
to migrate a non head page of a hugetlb page?

Could you give some advise, thanks


Sorry, I was away for a while.

It seems unfortunate that move_pages says the passed user addresses
should be aligned to page boundaries. However, IIUC this is not checked
or enforced. Otherwise, passing a hugetlb page should return the same
error.

One thought would be that hugetlb mappings should behave the same
non-hugetlb mappings. If passed the address of a hugetlb tail page, align
the address to a hugetlb boundary and migrate the page. This changes the
existing behavior. However, it would be hard to imagine anyone depending
on this.

After taking a closer look at the add_page_for_migration(), it seems to
just ignore passed tail pages and do nothing for such passed addresses.
Correct? Or, am I missing something? Perhaps that is behavior we want/
need to preserve?

My mistake, status -EACCES is returned when passing a tail page of a
hugetlb page.


As mentioned in previous mail, before e66f17ff7177 ("mm/hugetlb: take
page table lock in follow_huge_pmd()") in v4.0, follow_page() will
return NULL on tail page for Huagetlb page, so move_pages() will return
-ENOENT errno, but after that commit, -EACCES is returned.

Meanwhile, the behavior of THP/HUGETLB is different, the whole THP will be
migrated on a tail page, but HUGETLB will return -EACCES(after v4.0)
or -ENOENT(before v4.0) on tail page.

Back to the question of 'What is the expected behavior if a tail page is
passed?'. I do not think we have defined an expected behavior. If
anything is 'expected' I would say it is -EACCES as returned today.


My question is,

Should we keep seem behavior between HUGETLB and THP, or only change the
errno from -EACCES to -ENOENT/-EBUSY.

Just to be clear. When you say "keep seem behavior between HUGETLB and THP",
are you saying that you would like hugetlb to perform migration of the entire
hugetlb page if a tail page is passed?

IMO, this would be ideal as it would mean that hugetlb and THP behave the same
when passed the address of a tail page. The fewer places where hugetlb
behavior diverges, the better. However, this does change behavior.

A separate patch will be needed for behavior change.


Correct.

Since the goal of this series is to convert to folios, we should maintain the
existing behavior and errno (-EACCES). In a subsequent patch, we can
change behavior.

That would be my suggestion.


Thanks all, will following the suggestion and re-post.