[PATCH v5 3/3] mm/page_alloc: Keep memoryless cpuless node 0 offline

Srikar Dronamraju srikar at linux.vnet.ibm.com
Wed Jun 24 19:28:46 AEST 2020


Currently Linux kernel with CONFIG_NUMA on a system with multiple
possible nodes, marks node 0 as online at boot.  However in practice,
there are systems which have node 0 as memoryless and cpuless.

This can cause numa_balancing to be enabled on systems with only one node
with memory and CPUs. The existence of this dummy node which is cpuless and
memoryless node can confuse users/scripts looking at output of lscpu /
numactl.

By marking, N_ONLINE as NODE_MASK_NONE, lets stop assuming that Node 0 is
always online.

v5.8-rc2
 available: 2 nodes (0,2)
 node 0 cpus:
 node 0 size: 0 MB
 node 0 free: 0 MB
 node 2 cpus: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
 node 2 size: 32625 MB
 node 2 free: 31490 MB
 node distances:
 node   0   2
   0:  10  20
   2:  20  10

proc and sys files
------------------
 /sys/devices/system/node/online:            0,2
 /proc/sys/kernel/numa_balancing:            1
 /sys/devices/system/node/has_cpu:           2
 /sys/devices/system/node/has_memory:        2
 /sys/devices/system/node/has_normal_memory: 2
 /sys/devices/system/node/possible:          0-31

v5.8-rc2 + patch
------------------
 available: 1 nodes (2)
 node 2 cpus: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
 node 2 size: 32625 MB
 node 2 free: 31487 MB
 node distances:
 node   2
   2:  10

proc and sys files
------------------
/sys/devices/system/node/online:            2
/proc/sys/kernel/numa_balancing:            0
/sys/devices/system/node/has_cpu:           2
/sys/devices/system/node/has_memory:        2
/sys/devices/system/node/has_normal_memory: 2
/sys/devices/system/node/possible:          0-31

Note: On Powerpc, cpu_to_node of possible but not present cpus would
previously return 0. Hence this commit depends on commit ("powerpc/numa: Set
numa_node for all possible cpus") and commit ("powerpc/numa: Prefer node id
queried from vphn"). Without the 2 commits, Powerpc system might crash.

1. User space applications like Numactl, lscpu, that parse the sysfs tend to
believe there is an extra online node. This tends to confuse users and
applications. Other user space applications start believing that system was
not able to use all the resources (i.e missing resources) or the system was
not setup correctly.

2. Also existence of dummy node also leads to inconsistent information. The
number of online nodes is inconsistent with the information in the
device-tree and resource-dump

3. When the dummy node is present, single node non-Numa systems end up showing
up as NUMA systems and numa_balancing gets enabled. This will mean we take
the hit from the unnecessary numa hinting faults.

Cc: linuxppc-dev at lists.ozlabs.org
Cc: linux-mm at kvack.org
Cc: linux-kernel at vger.kernel.org
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko at suse.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman at suse.de>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka at suse.cz>
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill at shutemov.name>
Cc: Christopher Lameter <cl at linux.com>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe at ellerman.id.au>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm at linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds at linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Gautham R Shenoy <ego at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Satheesh Rajendran <sathnaga at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david at redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Srikar Dronamraju <srikar at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
---
Changelog v4:->v5:
- rebased to v5.8-rc2
link v4: http://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200512132937.19295-1-srikar@linux.vnet.ibm.com/t/#u

Changelog v1:->v2:
- Rebased to v5.7-rc3
Link v2: https://lore.kernel.org/linuxppc-dev/20200428093836.27190-1-srikar@linux.vnet.ibm.com/t/#u

 mm/page_alloc.c | 4 +++-
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index 48eb0f1410d4..5187664558e1 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -117,8 +117,10 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(latent_entropy);
  */
 nodemask_t node_states[NR_NODE_STATES] __read_mostly = {
 	[N_POSSIBLE] = NODE_MASK_ALL,
+#ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
+	[N_ONLINE] = NODE_MASK_NONE,
+#else
 	[N_ONLINE] = { { [0] = 1UL } },
-#ifndef CONFIG_NUMA
 	[N_NORMAL_MEMORY] = { { [0] = 1UL } },
 #ifdef CONFIG_HIGHMEM
 	[N_HIGH_MEMORY] = { { [0] = 1UL } },
-- 
2.18.1



More information about the Linuxppc-dev mailing list