[PATCH] mm: prohibit the last subpage from reusing the entire large folio

[Barry Song <21cnbao@gmail.com>]

From: Barry Song <v-songbaohua@oppo.com>

In a Copy-on-Write (CoW) scenario, the last subpage will reuse the entire
large folio, resulting in the waste of (nr_pages - 1) pages. This wasted
memory remains allocated until it is either unmapped or memory
reclamation occurs.

The following small program can serve as evidence of this behavior

 main()
 {
 #define SIZE 1024 * 1024 * 1024UL
         void *p = malloc(SIZE);
         memset(p, 0x11, SIZE);
         if (fork() == 0)
                 _exit(0);
         memset(p, 0x12, SIZE);
         printf("done\n");
         while(1);
 }

For example, using a 1024KiB mTHP by:
 echo always > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-1024kB/enabled

(1) w/o the patch, it takes 2GiB,

Before running the test program,
 / # free -m
                total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
 Mem:            5754          84        5692           0          17        5669
 Swap:              0           0           0

 / # /a.out &
 / # done

After running the test program,
 / # free -m
                 total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
 Mem:            5754        2149        3627           0          19        3605
 Swap:              0           0           0

(2) w/ the patch, it takes 1GiB only,

Before running the test program,
 / # free -m
                 total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
 Mem:            5754          89        5687           0          17        5664
 Swap:              0           0           0

 / # /a.out &
 / # done

After running the test program,
 / # free -m
                total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
 Mem:            5754        1122        4655           0          17        4632
 Swap:              0           0           0

This patch migrates the last subpage to a small folio and immediately
returns the large folio to the system. It benefits both memory availability
and anti-fragmentation.

Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>
Cc: Lance Yang <ioworker0@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Barry Song <v-songbaohua@oppo.com>
---
 mm/memory.c | 8 ++++++++
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)

diff --git a/mm/memory.c b/mm/memory.c
index e17669d4f72f..0200bfc15f94 100644
--- a/mm/memory.c
+++ b/mm/memory.c
@@ -3523,6 +3523,14 @@ static bool wp_can_reuse_anon_folio(struct folio *folio,
 		folio_unlock(folio);
 		return false;
 	}
+	/*
+	 * If the last subpage reuses the entire large folio, it would
+	 * result in a waste of (nr_pages - 1) pages
+	 */
+	if (folio_ref_count(folio) == 1 && folio_test_large(folio)) {
+		folio_unlock(folio);
+		return false;
+	}
 	/*
 	 * Ok, we've got the only folio reference from our mapping
 	 * and the folio is locked, it's dark out, and we're wearing
-- 
2.34.1