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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: linux-mm@xxxxxxxxx Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx> Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Christopher Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Gautham R Shenoy <ego@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Satheesh Rajendran <sathnaga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Srikar Dronamraju <srikar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- Changelog v4:->v5: - rebased to v5.8-rc2 link v4: http://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200512132937.19295-1-srikar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/t/#u Changelog v1:->v2: - Rebased to v5.7-rc3 Link v2: https://lore.kernel.org/linuxppc-dev/20200428093836.27190-1-srikar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/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