Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:10:45 +0900
From: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
To: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>, linux@arm.linux.org.uk,
        Yinghai Lu <yinghai@kernel.org>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com>, Yakui Zhao <yakui.zhao@intel.com>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org,
        arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, kgene.kim@samsung.com,
        Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Subject: Re: [RFC] Tight check of pfn_valid on sparsemem
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On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:44:41 +0900
Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Kame.
> 
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 9:23 AM, KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki
> <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:44:23 +0900
> > Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> > If you _really_ can't make the section size smaller, and the vast
> >> > majority of the sections are fully populated, you could hack something
> >> > in.  We could, for instance, have a global list that's mostly readonly
> >> > which tells you which sections need to be have their sizes closely
> >> > inspected.  That would work OK if, for instance, you only needed to
> >> > check a couple of memory sections in the system.  It'll start to suck if
> >> > you made the lists very long.
> >>
> >> Thanks for advise. As I say, I hope Russell accept 16M section.
> >>
> >
> > It seems what I needed was good sleep....
> > How about this if 16M section is not acceptable ?
> >
> > == NOT TESTED AT ALL, EVEN NOT COMPILED ==
> >
> > register address of mem_section to memmap itself's page struct's pg->private field.
> > This means the page is used for memmap of the section.
> > Otherwise, the page is used for other purpose and memmap has a hole.
> 
> It's a very good idea. :)
> But can this handle case that a page on memmap pages have struct page
> descriptor of hole?
> I mean one page can include 128 page descriptor(4096 / 32).
yes.

> In there, 64 page descriptor is valid but remain 64 page descriptor is on hole.
> In this case, free_memmap doesn't free the page.

yes. but in that case, there are valid page decriptor for 64pages of holes.
pfn_valid() should return true but PG_reserved is set.
(This is usual behavior.)

My intention is that

 - When all 128 page descriptors are unused, free_memmap() will free it.
   In that case, clear page->private of a page for freed page descriptors.

 - When some of page descriptors are used, free_memmap() can't free it
   and page->private points to &mem_section. We may have memmap for memory
   hole but pfn_valid() is a function to check there is memmap or not.
   The bahavior of pfn_valid() is valid.
   Anyway, you can't free only half of page.

If my code doesn't seem to work as above, it's bug.


Thanks,
-Kame

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