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Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] memory: introduce an option to force onlining of
 hotplug memory
To:     =?UTF-8?Q?Roger_Pau_Monn=c3=a9?= <roger.pau@citrix.com>,
        =?UTF-8?B?SsO8cmdlbiBHcm/Dnw==?= <jgross@suse.com>
Cc:     linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>,
        Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@kernel.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org, linux-mm@kvack.org
References: <20200723084523.42109-1-roger.pau@citrix.com>
 <20200723084523.42109-4-roger.pau@citrix.com>
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 <20200723122300.GD7191@Air-de-Roger>
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From:   David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
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Message-ID: <0e04b526-924d-aa51-cc2e-2c7561ce3df2@redhat.com>
Date:   Thu, 23 Jul 2020 15:14:31 +0200
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On 23.07.20 15:08, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 02:28:13PM +0200, Jürgen Groß wrote:
>> On 23.07.20 14:23, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 01:37:03PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>> On 23.07.20 10:45, Roger Pau Monne wrote:
>>>>> Add an extra option to add_memory_resource that overrides the memory
>>>>> hotplug online behavior in order to force onlining of memory from
>>>>> add_memory_resource unconditionally.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is required for the Xen balloon driver, that must run the
>>>>> online page callback in order to correctly process the newly added
>>>>> memory region, note this is an unpopulated region that is used by Linux
>>>>> to either hotplug RAM or to map foreign pages from other domains, and
>>>>> hence memory hotplug when running on Xen can be used even without the
>>>>> user explicitly requesting it, as part of the normal operations of the
>>>>> OS when attempting to map memory from a different domain.
>>>>>
>>>>> Setting a different default value of memhp_default_online_type when
>>>>> attaching the balloon driver is not a robust solution, as the user (or
>>>>> distro init scripts) could still change it and thus break the Xen
>>>>> balloon driver.
>>>>
>>>> I think we discussed this a couple of times before (even triggered by my
>>>> request), and this is responsibility of user space to configure. Usually
>>>> distros have udev rules to online memory automatically. Especially, user
>>>> space should eb able to configure *how* to online memory.
>>>
>>> Note (as per the commit message) that in the specific case I'm
>>> referring to the memory hotplugged by the Xen balloon driver will be
>>> an unpopulated range to be used internally by certain Xen subsystems,
>>> like the xen-blkback or the privcmd drivers. The addition of such
>>> blocks of (unpopulated) memory can happen without the user explicitly
>>> requesting it, and hence not even aware such hotplug process is taking
>>> place. To be clear: no actual RAM will be added to the system.
>>>
>>> Failure to online such blocks using the Xen specific online handler
>>> (which does not handle back the memory to the allocator in any way)
>>> will result in the system getting stuck and malfunctioning.
>>>
>>>> It's the admin/distro responsibility to configure this properly. In case
>>>> this doesn't happen (or as you say, users change it), bad luck.
>>>>
>>>> E.g., virtio-mem takes care to not add more memory in case it is not
>>>> getting onlined. I remember hyper-v has similar code to at least wait a
>>>> bit for memory to get onlined.
>>>
>>> I don't think VirtIO or Hyper-V use the hotplug system in the same way
>>> as Xen, as said this is done to add unpopulated memory regions that
>>> will be used to map foreign memory (from other domains) by Xen drivers
>>> on the system.
>>>
>>> Maybe this should somehow use a different mechanism to hotplug such
>>> empty memory blocks? I don't mind doing this differently, but I would
>>> need some pointers. Allowing user-space to change a (seemingly
>>> unrelated) parameter and as a result produce failures on Xen drivers
>>> is not an acceptable solution IMO.
>>
>> Maybe we can use the same approach as Xen PV-domains: pre-allocate a
>> region in the memory map to be used for mapping foreign pages. For the
>> kernel it will look like pre-ballooned memory, so it will create struct
>> page for the region (which is what we are after), but it won't give the
>> memory to the allocator.
> 
> IMO using something similar to memory hotplug would give us more
> flexibility, and TBH the logic is already there in the balloon driver.
> It seems quite wasteful to allocate such region(s) beforehand for all
> domains, even when most of them won't end up using foreign mappings at
> all.

I do wonder why these issues you describe start to pop up now, literally
years after this stuff has been implemented - or am I missing something
important?

> 
> Anyway, I'm going to take a look at how to do that, I guess it's going
> to involve playing with the memory map and reserving some space.
> 
> I suggest we should remove the Xen balloon hotplug logic, as it's not
> working properly and we don't have a plan to fix it.

Which exact hotplug logic are you referring to?

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb