On 24.05.2018 16:39, Michal Hocko wrote:
> [I didn't really go through other patch but this one caught my eyes just
> because of the similar request proposed yesterday]
>
> On Wed 23-05-18 17:11:50, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> [...]
>> @@ -1686,6 +1686,10 @@ static int __ref __offline_pages(unsigned long start_pfn,
>> pfn = scan_movable_pages(start_pfn, end_pfn);
>> if (pfn) { /* We have movable pages */
>> ret = do_migrate_range(pfn, end_pfn);
>> + if (ret && !retry_forever) {
>> + ret = -EBUSY;
>> + goto failed_removal;
>> + }
>> goto repeat;
>> }
>>
>
> Btw. this will not work in practice. Even a single temporary pin on a page
> will fail way too easily. If you really need to control this then make
> it a retry counter with default -1UL.
Interestingly, this will work for the one specific use case that I am
using this interface for right now.
The reason is that I don't want to offline a specific chunk, I want to
find some chunks to offline (in contrast to e.g. DIMMs where you rely
try to offline a very specific one).
If I get a failure on that chunk (e.g. temporary pin) I will retry the
next chunk. At one point, I will eventually retry this chunk and then it
succeeds.
>
> We really do need a better error reporting from do_migrate_range and
> distinguish transient from permanent failures. In general we shouldn't
> even get here for pages which are not migrateable...
I totally agree, I also want to know if an error is permanent or
transient - and I want the posibility to "fail fast" (e.g. -EAGAIN)
instead of looping forever.
--
Thanks,
David / dhildenb
