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authorDavid Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>2020-10-13 16:55:35 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2020-10-13 18:38:33 -0700
commit9181a980625a45425085ccec0fc38074a16470a5 (patch)
tree56f9b339b01bc5c5d4477b446c29e437a8faa73a /include
parent27f852795a0684781750b95141c6d88be102ca5b (diff)
mm: document semantics of ZONE_MOVABLE
Let's document what ZONE_MOVABLE means, how it's used, and which special cases we have regarding unmovable pages (memory offlining vs. migration / allocations). Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Acked-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com> Cc: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com> Cc: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com> Cc: Pankaj Gupta <pankaj.gupta.linux@gmail.com> Cc: Baoquan He <bhe@redhat.com> Cc: Jason Wang <jasowang@redhat.com> Cc: Qian Cai <cai@lca.pw> Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200816125333.7434-7-david@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'include')
-rw-r--r--include/linux/mmzone.h35
1 files changed, 35 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
index 0f7a4ff4b059..927bd7e98a88 100644
--- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
+++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
@@ -396,6 +396,41 @@ enum zone_type {
*/
ZONE_HIGHMEM,
#endif
+ /*
+ * ZONE_MOVABLE is similar to ZONE_NORMAL, except that it contains
+ * movable pages with few exceptional cases described below. Main use
+ * cases for ZONE_MOVABLE are to make memory offlining/unplug more
+ * likely to succeed, and to locally limit unmovable allocations - e.g.,
+ * to increase the number of THP/huge pages. Notable special cases are:
+ *
+ * 1. Pinned pages: (long-term) pinning of movable pages might
+ * essentially turn such pages unmovable. Memory offlining might
+ * retry a long time.
+ * 2. memblock allocations: kernelcore/movablecore setups might create
+ * situations where ZONE_MOVABLE contains unmovable allocations
+ * after boot. Memory offlining and allocations fail early.
+ * 3. Memory holes: kernelcore/movablecore setups might create very rare
+ * situations where ZONE_MOVABLE contains memory holes after boot,
+ * for example, if we have sections that are only partially
+ * populated. Memory offlining and allocations fail early.
+ * 4. PG_hwpoison pages: while poisoned pages can be skipped during
+ * memory offlining, such pages cannot be allocated.
+ * 5. Unmovable PG_offline pages: in paravirtualized environments,
+ * hotplugged memory blocks might only partially be managed by the
+ * buddy (e.g., via XEN-balloon, Hyper-V balloon, virtio-mem). The
+ * parts not manged by the buddy are unmovable PG_offline pages. In
+ * some cases (virtio-mem), such pages can be skipped during
+ * memory offlining, however, cannot be moved/allocated. These
+ * techniques might use alloc_contig_range() to hide previously
+ * exposed pages from the buddy again (e.g., to implement some sort
+ * of memory unplug in virtio-mem).
+ *
+ * In general, no unmovable allocations that degrade memory offlining
+ * should end up in ZONE_MOVABLE. Allocators (like alloc_contig_range())
+ * have to expect that migrating pages in ZONE_MOVABLE can fail (even
+ * if has_unmovable_pages() states that there are no unmovable pages,
+ * there can be false negatives).
+ */
ZONE_MOVABLE,
#ifdef CONFIG_ZONE_DEVICE
ZONE_DEVICE,