linux-toradex.git/Documentation/vm, branch v4.4.106

mm: make compound_head() robust

2015-11-07T01:50:42+00:00

Hugh has pointed that compound_head() call can be unsafe in some
context. There's one example:

	CPU0					CPU1

isolate_migratepages_block()
  page_count()
    compound_head()
      !!PageTail() == true
					put_page()
					  tail->first_page = NULL
      head = tail->first_page
					alloc_pages(__GFP_COMP)
					   prep_compound_page()
					     tail->first_page = head
					     __SetPageTail(p);
      !!PageTail() == true
    

The race is pure theoretical. I don't it's possible to trigger it in
practice. But who knows.

We can fix the race by changing how encode PageTail() and compound_head()
within struct page to be able to update them in one shot.

The patch introduces page->compound_head into third double word block in
front of compound_dtor and compound_order. Bit 0 encodes PageTail() and
the rest bits are pointer to head page if bit zero is set.

The patch moves page->pmd_huge_pte out of word, just in case if an
architecture defines pgtable_t into something what can have the bit 0
set.

hugetlb_cgroup uses page->lru.next in the second tail page to store
pointer struct hugetlb_cgroup. The patch switch it to use page->private
in the second tail page instead. The space is free since ->first_page is
removed from the union.

The patch also opens possibility to remove HUGETLB_CGROUP_MIN_ORDER
limitation, since there's now space in first tail page to store struct
hugetlb_cgroup pointer. But that's out of scope of the patch.

That means page->compound_head shares storage space with:

 - page->lru.next;
 - page->next;
 - page->rcu_head.next;

That's too long list to be absolutely sure, but looks like nobody uses
bit 0 of the word.

page->rcu_head.next guaranteed[1] to have bit 0 clean as long as we use
call_rcu(), call_rcu_bh(), call_rcu_sched(), or call_srcu(). But future
call_rcu_lazy() is not allowed as it makes use of the bit and we can
get false positive PageTail().

[1] http://lkml.kernel.org/g/20150827163634.GD4029@linux.vnet.ibm.com

Signed-off-by: Kirill A. Shutemov 
Acked-by: Michal Hocko 
Reviewed-by: Andrea Arcangeli 
Cc: Hugh Dickins 
Cc: David Rientjes 
Cc: Vlastimil Babka 
Acked-by: Paul E. McKenney 
Cc: Aneesh Kumar K.V 
Cc: Andi Kleen 
Cc: Christoph Lameter 
Cc: Joonsoo Kim 
Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm, page_alloc: distinguish between being unable to sleep, unwilling to sleep and avoiding waking kswapd

2015-11-07T01:50:42+00:00

__GFP_WAIT has been used to identify atomic context in callers that hold
spinlocks or are in interrupts.  They are expected to be high priority and
have access one of two watermarks lower than "min" which can be referred
to as the "atomic reserve".  __GFP_HIGH users get access to the first
lower watermark and can be called the "high priority reserve".

Over time, callers had a requirement to not block when fallback options
were available.  Some have abused __GFP_WAIT leading to a situation where
an optimisitic allocation with a fallback option can access atomic
reserves.

This patch uses __GFP_ATOMIC to identify callers that are truely atomic,
cannot sleep and have no alternative.  High priority users continue to use
__GFP_HIGH.  __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM identifies callers that can sleep and
are willing to enter direct reclaim.  __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM to identify
callers that want to wake kswapd for background reclaim.  __GFP_WAIT is
redefined as a caller that is willing to enter direct reclaim and wake
kswapd for background reclaim.

This patch then converts a number of sites

o __GFP_ATOMIC is used by callers that are high priority and have memory
  pools for those requests. GFP_ATOMIC uses this flag.

o Callers that have a limited mempool to guarantee forward progress clear
  __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM but keep __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM. bio allocations fall
  into this category where kswapd will still be woken but atomic reserves
  are not used as there is a one-entry mempool to guarantee progress.

o Callers that are checking if they are non-blocking should use the
  helper gfpflags_allow_blocking() where possible. This is because
  checking for __GFP_WAIT as was done historically now can trigger false
  positives. Some exceptions like dm-crypt.c exist where the code intent
  is clearer if __GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM is used instead of the helper due to
  flag manipulations.

o Callers that built their own GFP flags instead of starting with GFP_KERNEL
  and friends now also need to specify __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM.

The first key hazard to watch out for is callers that removed __GFP_WAIT
and was depending on access to atomic reserves for inconspicuous reasons.
In some cases it may be appropriate for them to use __GFP_HIGH.

The second key hazard is callers that assembled their own combination of
GFP flags instead of starting with something like GFP_KERNEL.  They may
now wish to specify __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM.  It's almost certainly harmless
if it's missed in most cases as other activity will wake kswapd.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman 
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka 
Acked-by: Michal Hocko 
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Christoph Lameter 
Cc: David Rientjes 
Cc: Vitaly Wool 
Cc: Rik van Riel 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm: page migration avoid touching newpage until no going back

2015-11-06T03:34:48+00:00

We have had trouble in the past from the way in which page migration's
newpage is initialized in dribs and drabs - see commit 8bdd63809160 ("mm:
fix direct reclaim writeback regression") which proposed a cleanup.

We have no actual problem now, but I think the procedure would be clearer
(and alternative get_new_page pools safer to implement) if we assert that
newpage is not touched until we are sure that it's going to be used -
except for taking the trylock on it in __unmap_and_move().

So shift the early initializations from move_to_new_page() into
migrate_page_move_mapping(), mapping and NULL-mapping paths.  Similarly
migrate_huge_page_move_mapping(), but its NULL-mapping path can just be
deleted: you cannot reach hugetlbfs_migrate_page() with a NULL mapping.

Adjust stages 3 to 8 in the Documentation file accordingly.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Cc: Christoph Lameter 
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" 
Cc: Rik van Riel 
Cc: Vlastimil Babka 
Cc: Davidlohr Bueso 
Cc: Oleg Nesterov 
Cc: Sasha Levin 
Cc: Dmitry Vyukov 
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm: rmap use pte lock not mmap_sem to set PageMlocked

2015-11-06T03:34:48+00:00

KernelThreadSanitizer (ktsan) has shown that the down_read_trylock() of
mmap_sem in try_to_unmap_one() (when going to set PageMlocked on a page
found mapped in a VM_LOCKED vma) is ineffective against races with
exit_mmap()'s munlock_vma_pages_all(), because mmap_sem is not held when
tearing down an mm.

But that's okay, those races are benign; and although we've believed for
years in that ugly down_read_trylock(), it's unsuitable for the job, and
frustrates the good intention of setting PageMlocked when it fails.

It just doesn't matter if here we read vm_flags an instant before or after
a racing mlock() or munlock() or exit_mmap() sets or clears VM_LOCKED: the
syscalls (or exit) work their way up the address space (taking pt locks
after updating vm_flags) to establish the final state.

We do still need to be careful never to mark a page Mlocked (hence
unevictable) by any race that will not be corrected shortly after.  The
page lock protects from many of the races, but not all (a page is not
necessarily locked when it's unmapped).  But the pte lock we just dropped
is good to cover the rest (and serializes even with
munlock_vma_pages_all(), so no special barriers required): now hold on to
the pte lock while calling mlock_vma_page().  Is that lock ordering safe?
Yes, that's how follow_page_pte() calls it, and how page_remove_rmap()
calls the complementary clear_page_mlock().

This fixes the following case (though not a case which anyone has
complained of), which mmap_sem did not: truncation's preliminary
unmap_mapping_range() is supposed to remove even the anonymous COWs of
filecache pages, and that might race with try_to_unmap_one() on a
VM_LOCKED vma, so that mlock_vma_page() sets PageMlocked just after
zap_pte_range() unmaps the page, causing "Bad page state (mlocked)" when
freed.  The pte lock protects against this.

You could say that it also protects against the more ordinary case, racing
with the preliminary unmapping of a filecache page itself: but in our
current tree, that's independently protected by i_mmap_rwsem; and that
race would be why "Bad page state (mlocked)" was seen before commit
48ec833b7851 ("Revert mm/memory.c: share the i_mmap_rwsem").

Vlastimil Babka points out another race which this patch protects against.
 try_to_unmap_one() might reach its mlock_vma_page() TestSetPageMlocked a
moment after munlock_vma_pages_all() did its Phase 1 TestClearPageMlocked:
leaving PageMlocked and unevictable when it should be evictable.  mmap_sem
is ineffective because exit_mmap() does not hold it; page lock ineffective
because __munlock_pagevec() only takes it afterwards, in Phase 2; pte lock
is effective because __munlock_pagevec_fill() takes it to get the page,
after VM_LOCKED was cleared from vm_flags, so visible to try_to_unmap_one.

Kirill Shutemov points out that if the compiler chooses to implement a
"vma->vm_flags &= VM_WHATEVER" or "vma->vm_flags |= VM_WHATEVER" operation
with an intermediate store of unrelated bits set, since I'm here foregoing
its usual protection by mmap_sem, try_to_unmap_one() might catch sight of
a spurious VM_LOCKED in vm_flags, and make the wrong decision.  This does
not appear to be an immediate problem, but we may want to define vm_flags
accessors in future, to guard against such a possibility.

While we're here, make a related optimization in try_to_munmap_one(): if
it's doing TTU_MUNLOCK, then there's no point at all in descending the
page tables and getting the pt lock, unless the vma is VM_LOCKED.  Yes,
that can change racily, but it can change racily even without the
optimization: it's not critical.  Far better not to waste time here.

Stopped short of separating try_to_munlock_one() from try_to_munmap_one()
on this occasion, but that's probably the sensible next step - with a
rename, given that try_to_munlock()'s business is to try to set Mlocked.

Updated the unevictable-lru Documentation, to remove its reference to mmap
semaphore, but found a few more updates needed in just that area.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Cc: Christoph Lameter 
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" 
Cc: Rik van Riel 
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka 
Cc: Davidlohr Bueso 
Cc: Oleg Nesterov 
Cc: Sasha Levin 
Cc: Dmitry Vyukov 
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm Documentation: undoc non-linear vmas

2015-11-06T03:34:48+00:00

While updating some mm Documentation, I came across a few straggling
references to the non-linear vmas which were happily removed in v4.0.
Delete them.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Cc: Christoph Lameter 
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" 
Cc: Rik van Riel 
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka 
Cc: Davidlohr Bueso 
Cc: Oleg Nesterov 
Cc: Sasha Levin 
Cc: Dmitry Vyukov 
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Documentation/vm/transhuge.txt: add information about max_ptes_swap

2015-11-06T03:34:48+00:00

max_ptes_swap specifies how many pages can be brought in from swap when
collapsing a group of pages into a transparent huge page.

/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/max_ptes_swap

A higher value can cause excessive swap IO and waste memory.  A lower
value can prevent THPs from being collapsed, resulting fewer pages being
collapsed into THPs, and lower memory access performance.

Signed-off-by: Ebru Akagunduz 
Acked-by: Rik van Riel 
Acked-by: David Rientjes 
Cc: Oleg Nesterov 
Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Doc/slub: document slabinfo-gnuplot.sh script

2015-11-06T03:34:48+00:00

Add documentation on how to use slabinfo-gnuplot.sh script.

Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky 
Acked-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

proc: export idle flag via kpageflags

2015-09-10T20:29:01+00:00

As noted by Minchan, a benefit of reading idle flag from /proc/kpageflags
is that one can easily filter dirty and/or unevictable pages while
estimating the size of unused memory.

Note that idle flag read from /proc/kpageflags may be stale in case the
page was accessed via a PTE, because it would be too costly to iterate
over all page mappings on each /proc/kpageflags read to provide an
up-to-date value.  To make sure the flag is up-to-date one has to read
/sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap first.

Signed-off-by: Vladimir Davydov 
Reviewed-by: Andres Lagar-Cavilla 
Cc: Minchan Kim 
Cc: Raghavendra K T 
Cc: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Michal Hocko 
Cc: Greg Thelen 
Cc: Michel Lespinasse 
Cc: David Rientjes 
Cc: Pavel Emelyanov 
Cc: Cyrill Gorcunov 
Cc: Jonathan Corbet 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm: introduce idle page tracking

2015-09-10T20:29:01+00:00

Knowing the portion of memory that is not used by a certain application or
memory cgroup (idle memory) can be useful for partitioning the system
efficiently, e.g.  by setting memory cgroup limits appropriately.
Currently, the only means to estimate the amount of idle memory provided
by the kernel is /proc/PID/{clear_refs,smaps}: the user can clear the
access bit for all pages mapped to a particular process by writing 1 to
clear_refs, wait for some time, and then count smaps:Referenced.  However,
this method has two serious shortcomings:

 - it does not count unmapped file pages
 - it affects the reclaimer logic

To overcome these drawbacks, this patch introduces two new page flags,
Idle and Young, and a new sysfs file, /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap.
A page's Idle flag can only be set from userspace by setting bit in
/sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap at the offset corresponding to the page,
and it is cleared whenever the page is accessed either through page tables
(it is cleared in page_referenced() in this case) or using the read(2)
system call (mark_page_accessed()). Thus by setting the Idle flag for
pages of a particular workload, which can be found e.g.  by reading
/proc/PID/pagemap, waiting for some time to let the workload access its
working set, and then reading the bitmap file, one can estimate the amount
of pages that are not used by the workload.

The Young page flag is used to avoid interference with the memory
reclaimer.  A page's Young flag is set whenever the Access bit of a page
table entry pointing to the page is cleared by writing to the bitmap file.
If page_referenced() is called on a Young page, it will add 1 to its
return value, therefore concealing the fact that the Access bit was
cleared.

Note, since there is no room for extra page flags on 32 bit, this feature
uses extended page flags when compiled on 32 bit.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix build]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: kpageidle requires an MMU]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: decouple from page-flags rework]
Signed-off-by: Vladimir Davydov 
Reviewed-by: Andres Lagar-Cavilla 
Cc: Minchan Kim 
Cc: Raghavendra K T 
Cc: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Michal Hocko 
Cc: Greg Thelen 
Cc: Michel Lespinasse 
Cc: David Rientjes 
Cc: Pavel Emelyanov 
Cc: Cyrill Gorcunov 
Cc: Jonathan Corbet 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

proc: add kpagecgroup file

2015-09-10T20:29:01+00:00

/proc/kpagecgroup contains a 64-bit inode number of the memory cgroup each
page is charged to, indexed by PFN.  Having this information is useful for
estimating a cgroup working set size.

The file is present if CONFIG_PROC_PAGE_MONITOR && CONFIG_MEMCG.

Signed-off-by: Vladimir Davydov 
Reviewed-by: Andres Lagar-Cavilla 
Cc: Minchan Kim 
Cc: Raghavendra K T 
Cc: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Michal Hocko 
Cc: Greg Thelen 
Cc: Michel Lespinasse 
Cc: David Rientjes 
Cc: Pavel Emelyanov 
Cc: Cyrill Gorcunov 
Cc: Jonathan Corbet 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds