Re: collision between ZONE_MOVABLE and memblock allocations

[Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>]

On Tue 18-07-23 16:01:06, Ross Zwisler wrote:
[...]
> I do think that we need to fix this collision between ZONE_MOVABLE and memmap
> allocations, because this issue essentially makes the movablecore= kernel
> command line parameter useless in many cases, as the ZONE_MOVABLE region it
> creates will often actually be unmovable.

movablecore is kinda hack and I would be more inclined to get rid of it
rather than build more into it. Could you be more specific about your
use case?

> Here are the options I currently see for resolution:
> 
> 1. Change the way ZONE_MOVABLE memory is allocated so that it is allocated from
> the beginning of the NUMA node instead of the end. This should fix my use case,
> but again is prone to breakage in other configurations (# of NUMA nodes, other
> architectures) where ZONE_MOVABLE and memblock allocations might overlap.  I
> think that this should be relatively straightforward and low risk, though.
> 
> 2. Make the code which processes the movablecore= command line option aware of
> the memblock allocations, and have it choose a region for ZONE_MOVABLE which
> does not have these allocations. This might be done by checking for
> PageReserved() as we do with offlining memory, though that will take some boot
> time reordering, or we'll have to figure out the overlap in another way. This
> may also result in us having two ZONE_NORMAL zones for a given NUMA node, with
> a ZONE_MOVABLE section in between them.  I'm not sure if this is allowed?

Yes, this is no problem. Zones are allowed to be sparse.

> If
> we can get it working, this seems like the most correct solution to me, but
> also the most difficult and risky because it involves significant changes in
> the code for memory setup at early boot.
> 
> Am I missing anything are there other solutions we should consider, or do you
> have an opinion on which solution we should pursue?

If this really needs to be addressed than 2) is certainly a more robust
approach.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs