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Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2024 11:08:26 -0400
From: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
To: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: Yang Shi <shy828301@gmail.com>,
	kernel test robot <oliver.sang@intel.com>,
	Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@nvidia.com>,
	Vivek Kasireddy <vivek.kasireddy@intel.com>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>, oe-lkp@lists.linux.dev,
	lkp@intel.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
	Christopher Lameter <cl@linux.com>, linux-mm@kvack.org
Subject: Re: [linus:master] [mm] efa7df3e3b:
 kernel_BUG_at_include/linux/page_ref.h
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On Sat, Jun 01, 2024 at 08:22:21AM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 01.06.24 02:59, Yang Shi wrote:
> > On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 5:01 PM Yang Shi <shy828301@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 4:25 PM Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 07:46:41PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> > > > > try_grab_folio()->try_get_folio()->folio_ref_try_add_rcu()
> > > > > 
> > > > > Is called (mm-unstable) from:
> > > > > 
> > > > > (1) gup_fast function, here IRQs are disable
> > > > > (2) gup_hugepte(), possibly problematic
> > > > > (3) memfd_pin_folios(), possibly problematic
> > > > > (4) __get_user_pages(), likely problematic
> > > > > 
> > > > > (1) should be fine.
> > > > > 
> > > > > (2) is possibly problematic on the !fast path. If so, due to commit
> > > > >      a12083d721d7 ("mm/gup: handle hugepd for follow_page()") ? CCing Peter.
> > > > > 
> > > > > (3) is possibly wrong. CCing Vivek.
> > > > > 
> > > > > (4) is what we hit here
> > > > 
> > > > I guess it was overlooked because try_grab_folio() didn't have any comment
> > > > or implication on RCU or IRQ internal helpers being used, hence a bit
> > > > confusing.  E.g. it has different context requirement on try_grab_page(),
> > > > even though they look like sister functions.  It might be helpful to have a
> > > > better name, something like try_grab_folio_rcu() in this case.
> > > > 
> > > > Btw, none of above cases (2-4) have real bug, but we're looking at some way
> > > > to avoid triggering the sanity check, am I right?  I hope besides the host
> > > > splash I didn't overlook any other side effect this issue would cause, and
> > > > the splash IIUC should so far be benign, as either gup slow (2,4) or the
> > > > newly added memfd_pin_folios() (3) look like to have the refcount stablized
> > > > anyway.
> > > > 
> > > > Yang's patch in the other email looks sane to me, just that then we'll add
> > > > quite some code just to avoid this sanity check in paths 2-4 which seems
> > > > like an slight overkill.
> > > > 
> > > > One thing I'm thinking is whether folio_ref_try_add_rcu() can get rid of
> > > > its RCU limitation. It boils down to whether we can use atomic_add_unless()
> > > > on TINY_RCU / UP setup too?  I mean, we do plenty of similar things
> > > > (get_page_unless_zero, etc.) in generic code and I don't understand why
> > > > here we need to treat folio_ref_try_add_rcu() specially.
> > > > 
> > > > IOW, the assertions here we added:
> > > > 
> > > >          VM_BUG_ON(!in_atomic() && !irqs_disabled());
> > > > 
> > > > Is because we need atomicity of below sequences:
> > > > 
> > > >          VM_BUG_ON_FOLIO(folio_ref_count(folio) == 0, folio);
> > > >          folio_ref_add(folio, count);
> > > > 
> > > > But atomic ops avoids it.
> > > 
> > > Yeah, I didn't think of why atomic can't do it either. But is it
> > > written in this way because we want to catch the refcount == 0 case
> > > since it means a severe bug? Did we miss something?
> > 
> > Thought more about it and disassembled the code. IIUC, this is an
> > optimization for non-SMP kernel. When in rcu critical section or irq
> > is disabled, we just need an atomic add instruction.
> > folio_ref_add_unless() would yield more instructions, including branch
> > instruction. But I'm wondering how useful it would be nowadays. Is it
> > really worth the complexity? AFAIK, for example, ARM64 has not
> > supported non-SMP kernel for years.
> > 
> > My patch actually replaced all folio_ref_add_unless() to
> > folio_ref_add() for slow paths, so it is supposed to run faster, but
> > we are already in slow path, it may be not measurable at all. So
> > having more simple and readable code may outweigh the potential slight
> > performance gain in this case?
> 
> Yes, we don't want to use atomic RMW that return values where we can use
> atomic RMW that don't return values. The former is slower and implies a
> memory barrier, that can be optimized out on some arcitectures (arm64 IIRC)
> 
> We should clean that up here, and make it clearer that the old function is
> only for grabbing a folio if it can be freed concurrently -- GUP-fast.

Note again that this only affects TINY_RCU, which mostly implies
!PREEMPTION and UP.  It's a matter of whether we prefer adding these bunch
of code to optimize that.

Also we didn't yet measure that in a real workload and see how that
"unless" plays when buried in other paths, but then we'll need a special
kernel build first, and again I'm not sure whether it'll be worthwhile.

Thanks,

-- 
Peter Xu