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Date:   Wed, 8 Jul 2020 14:46:38 -0400
From:   Daniel Jordan <daniel.m.jordan@oracle.com>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc:     Daniel Jordan <daniel.m.jordan@oracle.com>, linux-mm@kvack.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
        David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>,
        Pavel Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@soleen.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Steven Sistare <steven.sistare@oracle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] x86/mm: use max memory block size on bare metal
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(I'm back now)

On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 02:47:06PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Mon 22-06-20 15:17:39, Daniel Jordan wrote:
> > Hello Michal,
> > 
> > (I've been away and may be slow to respond for a little while)
> > 
> > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 02:07:04PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > I believe that we should think about a future interface rather than
> > > trying to ducktape the blocksize anytime it causes problems. I would be
> > > even tempted to simply add a kernel command line option 
> > > memory_hotplug=disable,legacy,new_shiny
> > > 
> > > for disable it would simply drop all the sysfs crud and speed up boot
> > > for most users who simply do not care about memory hotplug. new_shiny
> > > would ideally provide an interface that would either export logically
> > > hotplugable memory ranges (e.g. DIMMs) or a query/action interface which
> > > accepts physical ranges as input. Having gazillions of sysfs files is
> > > simply unsustainable.
> > 
> > So in this idea, presumably the default would start off being legacy and then
> > later be changed to new_shiny?
> 
> Well it really depends. Going with disable as a default would suit most
> users much better because the vast majority simply doesn't use the
> functionality. On the other hand real users would regress unless they
> enable the option. Which is definitely not nice.

Agreed.

> Another and much less
> intrusive change would be creating sysfs interface on-demand. So until
> somebody actually tries to use the interface it won't exist. I haven't
> tried to explore how complex that would be. I am not really familiar
> with sysfs to be honest. But fundamentally nothing should prevent such a
> solution.

Hm, don't know sysfs internals either.  It seems possible that someone (or
something...) navigating around could trigger creation unintentionally--for
instance, by reading the symlinks to the memory block dirs in
/sys/devices/system/node/nodeN when trying to find another file to read in the
same place.

> Another option would be to create sysfs interface only if there is a
> hotplugable memory reported by the platform. But I am not sure we have a
> proper interface for that for all arches.

Systems that happen to have hotpluggable ranges but don't want the
overhead would still be stuck, though, it seems.


FWIW, the ideas for new_shiny sound promising.