Re: [PATCH] mm/ksm: introduce ksm_enabled for each process

[CGEL]

On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 09:35:30AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Thu 19-05-22 06:23:30, CGEL wrote:
> > On Wed, May 18, 2022 at 02:12:26PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > On Wed 18-05-22 02:47:06, CGEL wrote:
> > > > On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 04:04:38PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > > > [CCing Hugh and linux-api]
> > > > > 
> > > > > On Tue 17-05-22 09:27:01, cgel.zte@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > > > > per mm but the actual implementation currently relies on the per-vma
> > > > > flags. That means that one can explicitly disallow merging by madvise
> > > > > for a range. Is it wise to override that by a per-process knob? I mean
> > > > > there might be a very good reason why a particular memory ranges should
> > > > > never be merged but a per-process knob could easily ignore that hint
> > > > > from the application. Or am I just confuse?
> > > > For now, there is no any hints for letting KSM never merge some memory
> > > > ranges.
> > > 
> > > I am not sure I understand. Could you be more specific?
> > 
> > Not like THP, KSM doesn't have anything like VM_NOHUGEPAGE, so apps
> > cann't explicitly disallow merging by madvise. If it is really necessary for
> > a particular meory ranges of a process to be never merged, we have to submit
> > one more patch to achieve that.
> 
> What about MADV_UNMERGEABLE?

MADV_UNMERGEABLE and MADV_MERGEABLE usually appear in pairs, MADV_UNMERGEABLE cannot
appear alone. I mean MADV_UNMERGEABLE is used to unmerges whatever it merged in the
specifed range, not to disallow merging.

> -- 
> Michal Hocko
> SUSE Labs