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Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 3/9] mm: pagewalk: Don't split transhuge pmds when a
 pmd_entry is present
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Thomas Hellstrom <thellstrom@vmware.com>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@shutemov.name>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Linux-MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
        Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>,
        Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>,
        Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>,
        =?UTF-8?B?SsOpcsO0bWUgR2xpc3Nl?= <jglisse@redhat.com>
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From:   =?UTF-8?Q?Thomas_Hellstr=c3=b6m_=28VMware=29?= 
        <thomas_os@shipmail.org>
Organization: VMware Inc.
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Date:   Thu, 10 Oct 2019 08:15:03 +0200
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On 10/10/19 4:07 AM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 9, 2019 at 6:10 PM Thomas Hellström (VMware)
> <thomas_os@shipmail.org> wrote:
>> Your original patch does exactly the same!
> Oh, no. You misread my original patch.
>
> Look again.
>
> The logic in my original patch was very different. It said that
>
>   - *if* we have a pmd_entry function, then we obviously call that one.
>
>      And if - after calling the pmd_entry function - we are still a
> hugepage, then we skip the pte_entry case entirely.
>
>     And part of skipping is obviously "don't split" - but it never had
> that "don't split and then call the pte walker" case.
>
>   - and if we *don't* have a pmd_entry function, but we do have a
> pte_entry function, then we always split before calling it.
>
> Notice the difference?

 From what I can tell, my patch is doing the same. At least that always 
was the intention. To determine whether to skip pte and skip split, your 
patch uses

                         /* No pte level at all? */
                         if (is_swap_pmd(*pmd) || pmd_trans_huge(*pmd)
|| pmd_devmap(*pmd))
                                 continue;

whereas my patch does

                         if (pmd_trans_unstable(pmd))
                                 goto again;
			/* Fall through */

which is the same (pmd_trans_unstable() is the same test as you do, but 
not racy). Yes, it's missing the test for pmd_devmap() but I think 
that's an mm bug been discussed elsewhere, and we also rerun because a 
huge / none pmd at this (FALLBACK) point is probably a race and unintended.

>
> But I think the "change pmd_entry to have a sane return code" is a
> simpler and more flexible model, and then the pmd_entry code can just
> let the pte walker split the pmd if needed.

OK, let's aim for that then.

Thanks,

Thomas


>
> So I liked that part of your patch.
>
>             Linus