Re: [PATCH v1] mm/vmalloc: fix exact allocations with an alignment > 1

From: Uladzislau Rezki
Date: Wed Sep 29 2021 - 12:11:03 EST


> > Could you please to be more specific? I mean how is it connected with huge
> > pages mappings? Huge-pages are which have order > 0. Or you mean that
> > a special alignments are needed for mapping huge pages?
>
> Let me try to clarify:
>
>
> KASAN does an exact allocation when onlining a memory block,
> __vmalloc_node_range() will try placing huge pages first, increasing the
> alignment to e.g., "1 << PMD_SHIFT".
>
> If we increase the search length in find_vmap_lowest_match(), that
> search will fail if the exact allocation is surrounded by other
> allocations. In that case, we won't place a huge page although we could
> -- because find_vmap_lowest_match() would be imprecise for alignments >
> PAGE_SIZE.
>
>
> Memory blocks we online/offline on x86 are at least 128MB. The KASAN
> "overhead" we have to allocate is 1/8 of that -- 16 MB, so essentially 8
> huge pages.
>
> __vmalloc_node_range() will increase the alignment to 2MB to try placing
> huge pages first. find_vmap_lowest_match() will search within the given
> exact 16MB are a 18MB area (size + align), which won't work. So
> __vmalloc_node_range() will fallback to the original PAGE_SIZE alignment
> and shift=PAGE_SHIFT.
>
> __vmalloc_area_node() will set the set_vm_area_page_order effectively to
> 0 -- small pages.
>
> Does that make sense or am I missing something?
>
Thank you for clarification. OK, we come back anyway to the "problem" with fixed
range and an exact allocation plus a special alignment > PAGE_SIZE. Thus the
KASAN will not make use of huge pages mappings and go with regular instead
as a fallback path. But we would like to utilize huge-mappings for KASAN.

I will send the patch you tested and add your "tested-by" tag. Does it
sound good?

--
Uladzislau Rezki