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Linus Torvalds edf445ad7c Merge branch 'hugepage-fallbacks' (hugepatch patches from David Rientjes)
Merge hugepage allocation updates from David Rientjes:
 "We (mostly Linus, Andrea, and myself) have been discussing offlist how
  to implement a sane default allocation strategy for hugepages on NUMA
  platforms.

  With these reverts in place, the page allocator will happily allocate
  a remote hugepage immediately rather than try to make a local hugepage
  available. This incurs a substantial performance degradation when
  memory compaction would have otherwise made a local hugepage
  available.

  This series reverts those reverts and attempts to propose a more sane
  default allocation strategy specifically for hugepages. Andrea
  acknowledges this is likely to fix the swap storms that he originally
  reported that resulted in the patches that removed __GFP_THISNODE from
  hugepage allocations.

  The immediate goal is to return 5.3 to the behavior the kernel has
  implemented over the past several years so that remote hugepages are
  not immediately allocated when local hugepages could have been made
  available because the increased access latency is untenable.

  The next goal is to introduce a sane default allocation strategy for
  hugepages allocations in general regardless of the configuration of
  the system so that we prevent thrashing of local memory when
  compaction is unlikely to succeed and can prefer remote hugepages over
  remote native pages when the local node is low on memory."

Note on timing: this reverts the hugepage VM behavior changes that got
introduced fairly late in the 5.3 cycle, and that fixed a huge
performance regression for certain loads that had been around since
4.18.

Andrea had this note:

 "The regression of 4.18 was that it was taking hours to start a VM
  where 3.10 was only taking a few seconds, I reported all the details
  on lkml when it was finally tracked down in August 2018.

     https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20180820032640.9896-2-aarcange@redhat.com/

  __GFP_THISNODE in MADV_HUGEPAGE made the above enterprise vfio
  workload degrade like in the "current upstream" above. And it still
  would have been that bad as above until 5.3-rc5"

where the bad behavior ends up happening as you fill up a local node,
and without that change, you'd get into the nasty swap storm behavior
due to compaction working overtime to make room for more memory on the
nodes.

As a result 5.3 got the two performance fix reverts in rc5.

However, David Rientjes then noted that those performance fixes in turn
regressed performance for other loads - although not quite to the same
degree.  He suggested reverting the reverts and instead replacing them
with two small changes to how hugepage allocations are done (patch
descriptions rephrased by me):

 - "avoid expensive reclaim when compaction may not succeed": just admit
   that the allocation failed when you're trying to allocate a huge-page
   and compaction wasn't successful.

 - "allow hugepage fallback to remote nodes when madvised": when that
   node-local huge-page allocation failed, retry without forcing the
   local node.

but by then I judged it too late to replace the fixes for a 5.3 release.
So 5.3 was released with behavior that harked back to the pre-4.18 logic.

But now we're in the merge window for 5.4, and we can see if this
alternate model fixes not just the horrendous swap storm behavior, but
also restores the performance regression that the late reverts caused.

Fingers crossed.

* emailed patches from David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>:
  mm, page_alloc: allow hugepage fallback to remote nodes when madvised
  mm, page_alloc: avoid expensive reclaim when compaction may not succeed
  Revert "Revert "Revert "mm, thp: consolidate THP gfp handling into alloc_hugepage_direct_gfpmask""
  Revert "Revert "mm, thp: restore node-local hugepage allocations""
2019-09-28 14:26:47 -07:00
arch powerpc fixes for 5.4 #2 2019-09-28 13:43:00 -07:00
block block: fix null pointer dereference in blk_mq_rq_timed_out() 2019-09-27 07:01:25 -06:00
certs PKCS#7: Refactor verify_pkcs7_signature() 2019-08-05 18:40:18 -04:00
crypto Merge branch 'next-lockdown' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security 2019-09-28 08:14:15 -07:00
Documentation Merge branch 'next-lockdown' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security 2019-09-28 08:14:15 -07:00
drivers Merge branch 'next-lockdown' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security 2019-09-28 08:14:15 -07:00
fs Merge branch 'sched-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2019-09-28 12:39:07 -07:00
include Merge branch 'hugepage-fallbacks' (hugepatch patches from David Rientjes) 2019-09-28 14:26:47 -07:00
init Merge branch 'next-lockdown' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security 2019-09-28 08:14:15 -07:00
ipc ipc/sem.c: convert to use built-in RCU list checking 2019-09-25 17:51:41 -07:00
kernel Merge branch 'sched-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2019-09-28 12:39:07 -07:00
lib lib: untag user pointers in strn*_user 2019-09-25 17:51:41 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Rename other to deprecated 2019-05-03 06:34:32 -06:00
mm Merge branch 'hugepage-fallbacks' (hugepatch patches from David Rientjes) 2019-09-28 14:26:47 -07:00
net Highlights: 2019-09-27 17:00:27 -07:00
samples rpmsg updates for v5.4 2019-09-22 10:58:15 -07:00
scripts Merge branch 'next-integrity' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/zohar/linux-integrity 2019-09-27 19:37:27 -07:00
security Merge branch 'next-lockdown' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security 2019-09-28 08:14:15 -07:00
sound sound fixes for 5.4-rc1 2019-09-24 16:46:16 -07:00
tools powerpc fixes for 5.4 #2 2019-09-28 13:43:00 -07:00
usr kbuild: clean compressed initramfs image 2019-09-24 15:54:07 -07:00
virt * s390: ioctl hardening, selftests 2019-09-18 09:49:13 -07:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with the latest for_each macro list 2019-08-31 10:00:51 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes
.gitignore Modules updates for v5.4 2019-09-22 10:34:46 -07:00
.mailmap Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next 2019-09-18 12:34:53 -07:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS CREDITS: Update email address 2019-09-13 17:21:38 +03:00
Kbuild kbuild: do not descend to ./Kbuild when cleaning 2019-08-21 21:03:58 +09:00
Kconfig docs: kbuild: convert docs to ReST and rename to *.rst 2019-06-14 14:21:21 -06:00
MAINTAINERS add virtio-fs 2019-09-27 15:54:24 -07:00
Makefile Modules updates for v5.4 2019-09-22 10:34:46 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.