Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] hugetlb: Do not clear hugetlb dtor until allocating vmemmap

[Naoya Horiguchi <naoya.horiguchi@linux.dev>]

On Mon, Jul 17, 2023 at 05:49:41PM -0700, Mike Kravetz wrote:
> Freeing a hugetlb page and releasing base pages back to the underlying
> allocator such as buddy or cma is performed in two steps:
> - remove_hugetlb_folio() is called to remove the folio from hugetlb
>   lists, get a ref on the page and remove hugetlb destructor.  This
>   all must be done under the hugetlb lock.  After this call, the page
>   can be treated as a normal compound page or a collection of base
>   size pages.
> - update_and_free_hugetlb_folio() is called to allocate vmemmap if
>   needed and the free routine of the underlying allocator is called
>   on the resulting page.  We can not hold the hugetlb lock here.
> 
> One issue with this scheme is that a memory error could occur between
> these two steps.  In this case, the memory error handling code treats
> the old hugetlb page as a normal compound page or collection of base
> pages.  It will then try to SetPageHWPoison(page) on the page with an
> error.  If the page with error is a tail page without vmemmap, a write
> error will occur when trying to set the flag.
> 
> Address this issue by modifying remove_hugetlb_folio() and
> update_and_free_hugetlb_folio() such that the hugetlb destructor is not
> cleared until after allocating vmemmap.  Since clearing the destructor
> requires holding the hugetlb lock, the clearing is done in
> remove_hugetlb_folio() if the vmemmap is present.  This saves a
> lock/unlock cycle.  Otherwise, destructor is cleared in
> update_and_free_hugetlb_folio() after allocating vmemmap.
> 
> Note that this will leave hugetlb pages in a state where they are marked
> free (by hugetlb specific page flag) and have a ref count.  This is not
> a normal state.  The only code that would notice is the memory error
> code, and it is set up to retry in such a case.
> 
> A subsequent patch will create a routine to do bulk processing of
> vmemmap allocation.  This will eliminate a lock/unlock cycle for each
> hugetlb page in the case where we are freeing a large number of pages.
> 
> Fixes: ad2fa3717b74 ("mm: hugetlb: alloc the vmemmap pages associated with each HugeTLB page")
> Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
> Signed-off-by: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>

I wrote a reproducer to cause the race condition between memory failure
and shrinking free hugepage pool (with vmemmap optimization enabled).
Then I observed that v6.5-rc2 kernel panicked with "BUG: unable to handle
page fault for address...", and confirmed that the kernel with your patches
do not reproduce it.  Thank you for fixing this.

Tested-by: Naoya Horiguchi <naoya.horiguchi@nec.com>