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Date:   Wed, 1 Jul 2020 13:03:20 -0700 (PDT)
From:   David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
To:     Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
cc:     linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org,
        ben.widawsky@intel.com, alex.shi@linux.alibaba.com,
        dwagner@suse.de, tobin@kernel.org, cl@linux.com,
        akpm@linux-foundation.org, ying.huang@intel.com,
        dan.j.williams@intel.com, cai@lca.pw, stable@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] mm/vmscan: restore zone_reclaim_mode ABI
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References: <20200701152621.D520E62B@viggo.jf.intel.com> <20200701152623.384AF0A7@viggo.jf.intel.com>
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On Wed, 1 Jul 2020, Dave Hansen wrote:

> 
> From: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
> 
> I went to go add a new RECLAIM_* mode for the zone_reclaim_mode
> sysctl.  Like a good kernel developer, I also went to go update the
> documentation.  I noticed that the bits in the documentation didn't
> match the bits in the #defines.
> 
> The VM never explicitly checks the RECLAIM_ZONE bit.  The bit is,
> however implicitly checked when checking 'node_reclaim_mode==0'.
> The RECLAIM_ZONE #define was removed in a cleanup.  That, by itself
> is fine.
> 
> But, when the bit was removed (bit 0) the _other_ bit locations also
> got changed.  That's not OK because the bit values are documented to
> mean one specific thing and users surely rely on them meaning that one
> thing and not changing from kernel to kernel.  The end result is that
> if someone had a script that did:
> 
> 	sysctl vm.zone_reclaim_mode=1
> 
> That script went from doing nothing to writing out pages during
> node reclaim after the commit in question.  That's not great.
> 
> Put the bits back the way they were and add a comment so something
> like this is a bit harder to do again.  Update the documentation to
> make it clear that the first bit is ignored.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
> Fixes: 648b5cf368e0 ("mm/vmscan: remove unused RECLAIM_OFF/RECLAIM_ZONE")
> Cc: Ben Widawsky <ben.widawsky@intel.com>
> Cc: Alex Shi <alex.shi@linux.alibaba.com>
> Cc: Daniel Wagner <dwagner@suse.de>
> Cc: "Tobin C. Harding" <tobin@kernel.org>
> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> Cc: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>
> Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
> Cc: Qian Cai <cai@lca.pw>
> Cc: Daniel Wagner <dwagner@suse.de>
> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org

Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>