Re: [PATCH v3 4/4] mm/mempolicy: change cur_il_weight to atomic and carry the node with it

["Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>]

Gregory Price <gregory.price@memverge.com> writes:

> On Fri, Jan 26, 2024 at 03:40:27PM +0800, Huang, Ying wrote:
>> Gregory Price <gourry.memverge@gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>> > Two special observations:
>> > - if the weight is non-zero, cur_il_weight must *always* have a
>> >   valid node number, e.g. it cannot be NUMA_NO_NODE (-1).
>> 
>> IIUC, we don't need that, "MAX_NUMNODES-1" is used instead.
>> 
>
> Correct, I just thought it pertinent to call this out explicitly since
> I'm stealing the top byte, but the node value has traditionally been a
> full integer.
>
> This may be relevant should anyone try to carry, a random node value
> into this field. For example, if someone tried to copy policy->home_node
> into cur_il_weight for whatever reason.
>
> It's worth breaking out a function to defend against this - plus to hide
> the bit operations directly as you recommend below.
>
>> >  	/* Weighted interleave settings */
>> > -	u8 cur_il_weight;
>> > +	atomic_t cur_il_weight;
>> 
>> If we use this field for node and weight, why not change the field name?
>> For example, cur_wil_node_weight.
>> 
>
> ack.
>
>> > +			if (cweight & 0xFF)
>> > +				*policy = cweight >> 8;
>> 
>> Please define some helper functions or macros instead of operate on bits
>> directly.
>> 
>
> ack.
>
>> >  			else
>> >  				*policy = next_node_in(current->il_prev,
>> >  						       pol->nodes);
>> 
>> If we record current node in pol->cur_il_weight, why do we still need
>> curren->il_prev.  Can we only use pol->cur_il_weight?  And if so, we can
>> even make current->il_prev a union.
>> 
>
> I just realized that there's a problem here for shared memory policies.
>
> from weighted_interleave_nodes, I do this:
>
> cur_weight = atomic_read(&policy->cur_il_weight);
> ...
> weight--;
> ...
> atomic_set(&policy->cur_il_weight, cur_weight);
>
> On a shared memory policy, this is a race condition.
>
>
> I don't think we can combine il_prev and cur_wil_node_weight because
> the task policy may be different than the current policy.
>
> i.e. it's totally valid to do the following:
>
> 1) set_mempolicy(MPOL_INTERLEAVE)
> 2) mbind(..., MPOL_WEIGHTED_INTERLEAVE)
>
> Using current->il_prev between these two policies, is just plain incorrect,
> so I will need to rethink this, and the existing code will need to be
> updated such that weighted_interleave does not use current->il_prev.

IIUC, weighted_interleave_nodes() is only used for mempolicy of tasks
(set_mempolicy()), as in the following code.

+		*nid = (ilx == NO_INTERLEAVE_INDEX) ?
+			weighted_interleave_nodes(pol) :
+			weighted_interleave_nid(pol, ilx);

But, in contrast, it's bad to put task-local "current weight" in
mempolicy.  So, I think that it's better to move cur_il_weight to
task_struct.  And maybe combine it with current->il_prev.

--
Best Regards,
Huang, Ying