Re: [PATCH v2] cpu: Fix node state for whether it contains CPU

[David Rientjes]

On Mon, 29 Aug 2016, Tim Chen wrote:

> In current kernel code, we only call node_set_state(cpu_to_node(cpu),
> N_CPU) when a cpu is hot plugged.  But we do not set the node state for
> N_CPU when the cpus are brought online during boot.
> 
> So this could lead to failure when we check to see
> if a node contains cpu with node_state(node_id, N_CPU).
> 
> One use case is in the node_reclaime function:
> 
>         /*
>          * Only run node reclaim on the local node or on nodes that do
>          * not
>          * have associated processors. This will favor the local
>          * processor
>          * over remote processors and spread off node memory allocations
>          * as wide as possible.
>          */
>         if (node_state(pgdat->node_id, N_CPU) && pgdat->node_id !=
>                 numa_node_id())
>                 return NODE_RECLAIM_NOSCAN;
> 
> I instrumented the kernel to call this function after boot and it
> always returns 0 on a x86 desktop machine until I apply
> the attached patch.
> 
> int num_cpu_node(void)
> {
>        int i, nr_cpu_nodes = 0;
> 
>        for_each_node(i) {
>                if (node_state(i, N_CPU))
>                        ++ nr_cpu_nodes;
>        }
> 
>        return nr_cpu_nodes;
> }
> 
> Fix this by checking each node for online CPU when we initialize
> vmstat that's responsible for maintaining node state.
> 

That would mean that when node_reclaim_mode is enabled that we weren't 
properly returning NODE_RECLAIM_NOSCAN if a remote node had its own cpus 
and PGDAT_RECLAIM_LOCKED wasn't already set, so this seems like it could 
result in a performance improvement.

> v2:
> 1. Fix the problem for all architectures in the generic path
> inside vmstat, not just for x86.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx>