Re: KVM: memory ballooning bug?

From: Minchan Kim
Date: Sun Dec 27 2015 - 18:48:25 EST


On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 08:23:03PM +0300, Konstantin Khlebnikov wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 8:22 AM, Minchan Kim <minchan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > During my compaction-related stuff, I encountered some problems with
> > ballooning.
> >
> > Firstly, with repeated inflating and deflating cycle, guest memory(ie,
> > cat /proc/meminfo | grep MemTotal) decreased and couldn't recover.
> >
> > When I review source code, balloon_lock should cover release_pages_balloon.
> > Otherwise, struct virtio_balloon fields could be overwritten by race
> > of fill_balloon(e,g, vb->*pfns could be critical).
>
> I guess, in original design fill and leak could be called only from single
> kernel thread which manages balloon. Seems like lock was added
> only for migration. So, locking scheme should be revisited for sure.
> Probably it's been broken by some of recent changes.

When I read git log, it seems to be broken from introdcuing
balloon_compaction.
Anyway, ballooning is out of my interest. I just wanted to go ahead
my test for a long time without any problem. ;-)
If you guys want to redesign the locking scheme fully, please do.
Until that, I can go with my test with my patches I just sent.

Thanks.

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