Re: [patch] slab: add memory hotplug support

From: Pekka Enberg
Date: Tue Mar 02 2010 - 00:54:16 EST


David Rientjes wrote:
Slab lacks any memory hotplug support for nodes that are hotplugged
without cpus being hotplugged. This is possible at least on x86
CONFIG_MEMORY_HOTPLUG_SPARSE kernels where SRAT entries are marked
ACPI_SRAT_MEM_HOT_PLUGGABLE and the regions of RAM represent a seperate
node. It can also be done manually by writing the start address to
/sys/devices/system/memory/probe for kernels that have
CONFIG_ARCH_MEMORY_PROBE set, which is how this patch was tested, and
then onlining the new memory region.

When a node is hotadded, a nodelist for that node is allocated and initialized for each slab cache. If this isn't completed due to a lack
of memory, the hotadd is aborted: we have a reasonable expectation that
kmalloc_node(nid) will work for all caches if nid is online and memory is
available.

Since nodelists must be allocated and initialized prior to the new node's
memory actually being online, the struct kmem_list3 is allocated off-node
due to kmalloc_node()'s fallback.

When an entire node is offlined (or an online is aborted), these
nodelists are subsequently drained and freed. If objects still exist
either on the partial or full lists for those nodes, the offline is
aborted. This scenario will not occur for an aborted online, however,
since objects can never be allocated from those nodelists until the
online has completed.

Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx>

Andi, does this fix the oops you were seeing?

Pekka
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/