Re: Handling NUMA page migration

[Frank Mehnert <frank.mehnert@oracle.com>]

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On Tuesday 04 June 2013 13:58:07 Robin Holt wrote:
> This is probably more appropriate to be directed at the linux-mm
> mailing list.
> 
> On Tue, Jun 04, 2013 at 09:22:10AM +0200, Frank Mehnert wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > our memory management on Linux hosts conflicts with NUMA page migration.
> > I assume this problem existed for a longer time but Linux 3.8 introduced
> > automatic NUMA page balancing which makes the problem visible on
> > multi-node hosts leading to kernel oopses.
> > 
> > NUMA page migration means that the physical address of a page changes.
> > This is fatal if the application assumes that this never happens for
> > that page as it was supposed to be pinned.
> > 
> > We have two kind of pinned memory:
> > 
> > A) 1. allocate memory in userland with mmap()
> > 
> >    2. madvise(MADV_DONTFORK)
> >    3. pin with get_user_pages().
> >    4. flush dcache_page()
> >    5. vm_flags |= (VM_DONTCOPY | VM_LOCKED)
> >    
> >       (resulting flags are VM_MIXEDMAP | VM_DONTDUMP | VM_DONTEXPAND |
> >       
> >        VM_DONTCOPY | VM_LOCKED | 0xff)
> 
> I don't think this type of allocation should be affected.  The
> get_user_pages() call should elevate the pages reference count which
> should prevent migration from completing.  I would, however, wait for
> a more definitive answer.

Thanks Robin! Actually case B) is more important for us so I'm waiting
for more feedback :)

Frank

> > B) 1. allocate memory with alloc_pages()
> > 
> >    2. SetPageReserved()
> >    3. vm_mmap() to allocate a userspace mapping
> >    4. vm_insert_page()
> >    5. vm_flags |= (VM_DONTEXPAND | VM_DONTDUMP)
> >    
> >       (resulting flags are VM_MIXEDMAP | VM_DONTDUMP | VM_DONTEXPAND |
> >       0xff)
> > 
> > At least the memory allocated like B) is affected by automatic NUMA page
> > migration. I'm not sure about A).
> > 
> > 1. How can I prevent automatic NUMA page migration on this memory?
> > 2. Can NUMA page migration also be handled on such kind of memory without
> > 
> >    preventing migration?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Frank
> 
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-- 
Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox
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