netmem series needs some love and Acks from MM folks

[Harry Yoo]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2025 at 07:19:07PM -0700, Mina Almasry wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 6:13 PM Byungchul Park <byungchul@xxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 06:55:42PM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > > On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 10:30:01 +0900 Byungchul Park wrote:
> > > > > What's the intended relation between the types?
> > > >
> > > > One thing I'm trying to achieve is to remove pp fields from struct page,
> > > > and make network code use struct netmem_desc { pp fields; } instead of
> > > > sturc page for that purpose.
> > > >
> > > > The reason why I union'ed it with the existing pp fields in struct
> > > > net_iov *temporarily* for now is, to fade out the existing pp fields
> > > > from struct net_iov so as to make the final form like:
> > >
> > > I see, I may have mixed up the complaints there. I thought the effort
> > > was also about removing the need for the ref count. And Rx is
> > > relatively light on use of ref counting.
> > >
> > > > > netmem_ref exists to clearly indicate that memory may not be readable.
> > > > > Majority of memory we expect to allocate from page pool must be
> > > > > kernel-readable. What's the plan for reading the "single pointer"
> > > > > memory within the kernel?
> > > > >
> > > > > I think you're approaching this problem from the easiest and least
> > > >
> > > > No, I've never looked for the easiest way.  My bad if there are a better
> > > > way to achieve it.  What would you recommend?
> > >
> > > Sorry, I don't mean that the approach you took is the easiest way out.
> > > I meant that between Rx and Tx handling Rx is the easier part because
> > > we already have the suitable abstraction. It's true that we use more
> > > fields in page struct on Rx, but I thought Tx is also more urgent
> > > as there are open reports for networking taking references on slab
> > > pages.
> > >
> > > In any case, please make sure you maintain clear separation between
> > > readable and unreadable memory in the code you produce.
> >
> > Do you mean the current patches do not?  If yes, please point out one
> > as example, which would be helpful to extract action items.
> >
> 
> I think one thing we could do to improve separation between readable
> (pages/netmem_desc) and unreadable (net_iov) is to remove the struct
> netmem_desc field inside the net_iov, and instead just duplicate the
> pp/pp_ref_count/etc fields. The current code gives off the impression
> that net_iov may be a container of netmem_desc which is not really
> accurate.
> 
> But I don't think that's a major blocker. I think maybe the real issue
> is that there are no reviews from any mm maintainers?

Let's try changing the subject to draw some attention from MM people :)

> So I'm not 100%
> sure this is in line with their memdesc plans. I think probably
> patches 2->8 are generic netmem-ifications that are good to merge
> anyway, but I would say patch 1 and 9 need a reviewed by from someone
> on the mm side. Just my 2 cents.

As someone who worked on the zpdesc series, I think it is pretty much
in line with the memdesc plans.

I mean, it does differ a bit from the initial idea of generalizing it as
"bump" allocator, but overall, it's still aligned with the memdesc
plans, and looks like a starting point, IMHO.

> Btw, this series has been marked as changes requested on patchwork, so
> it is in need of a respin one way or another:

-- 
Cheers,
Harry / Hyeonggon