Re: [patch v2] slab: add memory hotplug support

From: Pekka Enberg
Date: Wed Apr 07 2010 - 12:30:12 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 would be offlined, its nodelists are subsequently
drained. If slab objects still exist and cannot be freed, the offline is
aborted. It is possible that objects will be allocated between this
drain and page isolation, so it's still possible that the offline will
still fail, however.

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

I queued this up for 2.6.35. Thanks!
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